Clearwater Lake Indian Hospital

This page will be updated periodically as our research into records related to patients treated at Clearwater Lake Indian Hospital continues.

The site that housed Clearwater Lake Indian Hospital was built during World War II by the United States military as an evacuation hospital. In 1945, the Canadian government purchased the site and converted the buildings to an Indian hospital. Like the Dynevor Indian Hospital and the Brandon Indian Sanatorium, Clearwater Lake Indian Hospital was funded by the federal government and operated by the Sanatorium Board of Manitoba until it closed in 1965.

Clearwater patients seem to have been particularly mobile. Because the facility had little equipment when it first opened, some patients were admitted to or had surgery at St. Anthony’s Hospital in The Pas. In addition, patients were sent to the Clearwater Lake Indian Hospital and then sometimes transferred to other facilities. In 1955, Inuit patients travelled from their home communities to Churchill, then to the Clearwater Lake hospital, and on to either Dynevor Indian Hospital or Brandon Indian Sanatorium. In 1962, patients from the Mountain Sanitorium in Hamilton, Ontario were transferred to the Clearwater Lake hospital, and when Clearwater Lake Indian Hospital closed in 1965 the approximately 50 remaining patients there were sent to the Ninette Sanatorium.

Before you begin your search, read our 'Where Do I Begin?' section of the website, including the Research Tips.

Depending on where your family or community member lived there are several “first stop” sources where researchers can begin. You may also find it helpful to come back to these sources if you have started somewhere else but hit a dead-end in your research.

Your research will take time. And maybe a lot of time, depending on how quickly various organizations respond your requests. Start the process of contacting them and requesting records as early as possible.

Before you contact the archives or records organizations, it is good to have some basic information handy, including:

• names, including any alternates (maiden names, step parent names, nicknames, etc.)
• where you think the person died or where they might be buried
• general time frame, especially an idea of when they may have passed away

You can download a find a fillable Research Checklist here.

This last piece of information is especially important for burial records, which sometimes contain personal health information (eg. the cause of death). In those cases, that record may be restricted, and you may have to wait a certain amount of time after a person’s death to access the records. In Manitoba, death records become unrestricted 70 years after death at which point some of the information becomes available in the Manitoba Vital Statistics online database. See the Manitoba Vital Statistics section below for additional information.

The Sanatorium Board of Manitoba (SBM) ran the Clearwater Lake Indian Hospital from its opening in 1945 until it closed in 1965.

Most of the surviving records of the SBM are held by the Archives of Manitoba. Access to records that include information that may identify individual patients is restricted under the Manitoba Personal Health Information Act.

You can request that a search be performed in these restricted records, like the San Board Tuberculosis Register, to see if there is information about a specific patient. To request these records, fill out and submit a Personal Health Information Act (PHIA) request.

The PHIA request forms are not designed for historical record requests and the form may ask you to provide information or proof that is not available to you. That’s ok. Just fill the information that you have and indicate how you are related to the patient in questions. Please note that information requests for PHIA searches can only be made by the patient or a family member of the patient.

Many of the deaths that occurred at the Clearwater Lake Indian Hospital were recorded with Manitoba’s Vital Statistics Agency. If the death occurred more than 70 years ago, the Manitoba Vital Statistics online database may contain useful information. The database is updated every three months, so deaths that occurred between October and December of a year may not be added until sometime after January.

Using this database may be easier if you know a few tricks. You can find an example of how the database can provide information that can help you locate burial sites in our Research Case Study: Manitoba Vital Statistics and Residential School Students.

Note: If you are looking for a family member who may have passed away less than 70 years ago, you can contact the Vital Statistics Agency and ask if you are able to request their death record. They may or may not be able to help in this situation, but you can ask.

During its operation by the Sanitorium Board of Manitoba, there were Inuit patients at the Clearwater Lake Indian Hospital.

If you are searching for information about an Inuit patient from the Inuvialuit Settlement Region you can request information from The Nanilavut Initiative. The Nanilavut Initiative was established after the Qikiqtani Truth Commission to help Inuvialuit and Inuit from across Canada locate lost loved ones who did not return home after being sent to southern hospitals during the Tuberculosis Epidemic (1940s to 1960s).

News story: In Pursuit of Resolution: Families continue to grieve loved ones who died of tuberculosis in the south (Nunavut News/North, 2017)

If the person you are searching for came from the Northwest Territories, the Government of the Northwest Territories may be able to help you by searching records held by the NWT Archives.

During the last part of the twentieth century, the Government of the Northwest Territories launched a program to help families locate people who did not return following TB treatment. The NWT Government will attempt to help anyone whose family member was sent from the NWT to a southern hospital to locate information if they are able. Contact the NWT Archives here.

The Manitoba Genealogical Society (MGS) has a wealth of cemetery transcriptions, and knowledgeable volunteers. Some of their resources are available online for free, but the best access is provided through purchasing a membership for a small fee.

Members and non-members can search the online Manitoba Name Index (MANI). You may need to try various spellings in your searches. Because many of the patients who died were not memorialized in a published obituary or with a headstone, the online databases may not be as helpful as some of the transcriptions the MGS holds in their collections but that are not included in the online databases. Only members can access the records that appear in the MANI database.

There are regional MGS sites across the province. If you cannot find what you need online and/or cannot attend a regional site, you can hire a volunteer to help you search through the MGS.

We will be adding more information about what is available through Library and Archives Canada (LAC) in the coming months. Broadly, Library and Archives Canada’s collections include schools files that may be helpful if the person you are looking for was a student at a residential school or sometimes a student at school located in a TB hospital. LAC also holds records of tuberculosis surveys and some hospital admissions. For young people who entered a sanatorium, family allowance records may also be helpful in your search.

Health records, family allowance files, and some school records will be restricted, but you may be able to make a request to see a particular record or records relating to yourself or a person who has passed away. The formal request procedure is explained online here.

The first place to check if you are looking for records relating to a family member who may have passed away at the Clearwater Lake Indian Hospital (or at nearby St. Anthony’s Hospital) are the Find A Grave websites for Riverside, Lakeside, and Mile 6 cemeteries.

Riverside Catholic Cemetery
Lakeside Cemetery
Big Eddy Cemetery

These three cemeteries all contain the graves of patients who were at the Clearwater Lake Indian Hospital. The Pas local researcher Ralph McLean has shared his exceptional research about the burials in these cemeteries via the Find A Grave entries; his work as presented on Find A Grave is well beyond what you will usually find at this site. That said, you may still want to check other nearby cemeteries if you are not able to find your loved one in these three.

The Archdiocese of Keewatin-Le Pas Archives may have burial records for patients who died at Clearwater Lake Indian Hospital or at St. Anthony’s Hospital in The Pas. You can contact them with as much information as possible if the person may have received a Catholic burial and request a search of their burial records.

Administrative Assistant: Nicole Helstrom
Email: chancery@keepas.ca
76 First Street West Phone: (204) 623-6152 ext 1
P.O. Box 270
The Pas, MB R9A 1K4

The Société historique de Saint-Boniface hosts some religious records which may include burial records from the Archdiocese of Keewatin-Le Pas, including the Clearwater Lake Indian Hospital/St. Anthony’s Hospital in The Pas, The St. Vital Hospital/Sanatorium, Ninette, and possibly others. Researchers may have to get permission from the originating organization to access these records. The website and research services are available in both French and English.

The records for Anglican deaths/burials in Manitoba are generally held by Archives of the Diocese of Rupert’s Land, the Diocese of Brandon, or the Indigenous Spiritual Ministry of Mishamakweesh (formerly the Diocese of Keewatin) Archives which are held at the Anglican General Synod Archives in Toronto.

Records of burials in Anglican cemeteries at and near The Pas, including some related to Elkhorn Residential School and McKay Residential school, are held by the Diocese of Brandon. Contact:

Administrative Archivist
Teresa Longworth
Phone: (204) 727-2380 ext. 101
Email: info@brandon.anglican.ca

If the person you are looking for might have been Catholic, there is a small possibility that some of the records you are looking for might be at the Archdiocese of St. Boniface or the Archdiocese of Winnipeg.

If the person you are looking for was not Anglican or Catholic, you may want to contact these archives:

Conference of Manitoba Northwestern Ontario & All Native Circle Conference
United Church of Canada Archives
Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives

Several of the funeral homes in The Pas are long-standing businesses dating to the period the Clearwater Lake Indian Hospital was open (and even earlier). The funeral home that handled the patient’s burial may still retain records about the death and burial. Some of these businesses have changed names over the years. For the area of The Pas, this includes:

• Hemauer Funeral Home and Cremation Services (formerly Hayes Funeral Home)

• Grant Funeral Home & Crematorium (formerly the McSorely Funeral Home and the Dadson Funeral Home)

• The Atkinson Funeral Home (we are currently looking into more information about where these records might be located).

If you are able to help us locate funeral home records related to any of the TB hospitals, including Clearwater Lake Indian Hospital and St. Anthony’s Hospital, please email us tbphotos@uwinnipeg.ca.

Patients could move back and forth between other hospitals in the area. Clearwater Lake Indian Hospital was not equipped to handle labour and delivery, for instance, so babies were likely born at St. Anthony’s Hospital in The Pas. You may want to make a PHIA request (as outlined above) for patient records if you think that the person you are looking at might have died at one of these facilities.

The MITHP team has complied Federal Voters Lists for the Clearwater Lake Indian Hospital for select years from 1949 through the 1960s. Voters lists for provincial or municipal elections are not included here.

Clearwater Lake Indian Hospital Select Federal Voters Lists

All three of the Manitoba Indian TB hospitals, the Ninette Sanatorium, and the St. Boniface Sanatorium had schools in the hospitals. At Brandon Indian Sanatorium, Dynevor Indian Hospital, and Clearwater Lake Indian Hospital the schools were federally funded and were inspected by federal authorities. They were subject to regular reporting, including pupil lists. Pupils were not always limited to young people and can include adult patient-students as well. The school inspection records are held in Library and Archives Canada (LAC) collections. Some of these records are open and available online, others must be requested through LAC via an Access to Information and Privacy (ATIP) Online Request. You can also contact LAC to help locate records that might be relevant but are not necessarily obvious from LAC database searches.

The archive of the National Center for Truth and Reconciliation Archive has some of the RG 10 school files available online, but the records are not complete. Some of the Admissions and Discharges files in particular are missing. The RG 10 school files are digitized via the LAC website here.

Heritage Canadiana is another resource for hospital school records. Heritage Canadiana is the online repository for some non-restricted files that LAC has digitized. To figure out if the file that you want to view is available online through Heritage Canadiana, follow these steps:

1. Locate the file in the LAC online catalogue.
2. Determine if the catalogue listing has a microfilm number. Note the volume and file number in the LAC online listing.
3. Cross-reference that microfilm number by searching for it on Heritage Canadiana.
4. Once you have located the reel on Heritage Canadiana, locate the volume that you are looking for (these are usually in numerical order on the microfilm). Once you are in the area of that volume number, look for the file number.

EXAMPLE

On the Library and Archives Canada website, perform a Collections Search for keywords relating to the topic you are searching for. In this case, we searched 'Brandon sanatorium school.'

This search brings up several search results, including PORTAGE LA PRAIRIE AGENCY - INSPECTOR'S REPORT ON THE BRANDON SANATORIUM SCHOOL .

The listing indicates that these documents can be found on LAC microfilm reel C-13880.

On Heritage Canadiana, Microfilm reel C-13880 can be found here.

The following are additional LAC files about the Clearwater Lake Indian Hospital school that may be useful to your search. Please note that these files focus more on staff and on the operation of the school. Library and Archives Canada may hold student lists for this school, but you may have to request them through an Access to Information request.

THE PAS AGENCY - INSPECTOR'S REPORTS ON THE CLEARWATER LAKE SANATORIUM INDIAN SCHOOL

Date: 1947-1956
Reference: RG10, Volume number: 8450, Microfilm reel number: C-13801, File number: 511/23-5-036
Textual material. [Conditions of access Open]. Government. File.
Heritage Canadiana link

THE PAS AGENCY - CORRESPONDENCE REGARDING INDIAN EDUCATION AT CLEARWATER LAKE HOSPITAL SCHOOL

Date: 1946-1960
Reference: RG10, Volume number: 8753, Microfilm reel number: C-9701, File number: 511/25-1-036, File part: 1
Textual material. [Conditions of access Open]. Government. File.
Heritage Canadiana link

WESTERN MANITOBA EDUCATIONAL DISTRICT - (THE PAS AGENCY) - SCHOOL ESTABLISHMENT - CLEARWATER LAKE HOSPITAL SCHOOL

Date: 1947-1960
Reference: RG10, Volume number: 8609, Microfilm reel number: C-14231, File number: 511/1-13-036, File part: 1
Textual material. [Conditions of access Open]. Government. File.
Heritage Canadiana link