is one of the most interesting yet disturbing projects that I've done.
I was hired in the spring of 2017 to map the 140 Indian Residential
Schools and their surrounding Reserves. These schools are a notorious
part of Canadian history, and these maps were for the Justice For Day Scholars initiative.
my surprise when I found out there was no geographic data for these
schools. That's right. Despite the research efforts of the Truth and
Reconciliation Comission, there was no list of latitude/longitude data
for the schools, no pre-existing maps of their actual locations.
On the other hand, there were several online maps that located the
schools. One was at the National Centre for
Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR), one at Carleton
University, and one at a site called Eugenics Archive.
However, none offered their geographic data for download. As well,
the three sites disagreed among themselves about the locations of a
number of schools, and since none of them made their evidence,
references, or chain of reasoning available to the visitor, it was not
possible to decide which was right.
So, I set out to do this research myself. Using survey maps at the
Canada Lands Survey System I found primary source maps that located sixty-two
of the schools. There were other archival documents that led me to be
able to locate another sixty-eight schools. Thirty-four of the schools I was never able
to locate precisely, but had evidence that allowed me to determine their position within a kilometre.
Those numbers add up to 164 locations. This is because many of the 140
schools moved, sometimes more than once.
You can download the data I created, in LibreOffice Calc format, here, and in KML (Google Earth) format here.
It includes references! However, there are a few caveats:
data, based in part on my research, is now (2017-2018) being produced
through a collaboration between NCTR and York University. My hope is
that it will eventually be posted on the web in a download-able format,
along with references for each location.
was hired to map only the 140 schools listed in the Indian Residential
Schools Settlement Agreement. These are only the schools that the
federal government funded and therefore was willing to take
responsibility for. My data does not include any of the three following
Schools that were funded in some other way, such as through privately-raised church funds
Day schools that never built a residence and thereby made the transition to being residential schools
Schools in Newfoundland and Labrador, which were not included in the settlement
did not thoroughly research the dates that each school operated. There
is much conflicting information about these dates, and sometimes dates
given reflect only the years that a school was government-funded. I did
not attempt to resolve these issues.
field called "Location precision distance (km)" (abbreviated to
"location p" in the KML file) is an expression of how precise the
location is. A zero value here means I feel confident that the school
is right there; a 0.5 or 1 value means the school was not percisely
locatable, but must be within 0.5 or 1 km of the location given.
If you are interested in the complete 201-page atlas of residential schools, with
maps of each location at 1:50,000, feel free to drop me an email
at morgan_at_hesperus-wild.org, and I can send you a PDF.
The projection was Lambert Conformal Conic, centred on 96° west, with standard parallels of 20° and 60° north, lat_0 = 40.