Dynevor Indian Hospital

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

Dynevor Indian Hospital was operated by the Anglican Church from 1896 until its was purchased in 1939 by the Government of Canada. The federal government funded and operated the hospital through an agreement with the Sanatorium Board of Manitoba.

The Dynevor Indian Hospital continued to operate as a federally-funded Indian hospital until it was closed in 1957. The 20 patients residing at the hospital when it closed in 1957 were sent to the Brandon Indian Sanatorium.

Some patients who died at the Dynevor Hospital, and particularly Anglican patients, are buried in the cemetery at St. Peter’s Dynevor Anglican Church located across the Red River from the hospital. Patients from other faith communities might be buried in different cemeteries.

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

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 ran the Dynevor Indian Hospital from 1939 until it closed in 1957. Most of the surviving records of the San Board 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 Central 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 in the information that you have and indicate how you are related to the patient in question. 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 Dynevor Indian Hospital were recorded with Manitoba’s Vital Statistics Agency. If the death occurred more than 70 years ago, you can search for the person’s name in the Manitoba Vital Statistics online database. 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 also find an example of how the database can provide information related to 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.

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 located in 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 by purchasing a membership for a small fee.

Members and non-members can search the online MANI (Manitoba Name Index) Database. You may need to try various spellings in your searches, but 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.

Sacramental Registers for many Anglican cemeteries can be found at the Archives of the Anglican Diocese of Rupert’s Land. These records include those for St. Peter’s Dynevor Anglican Church, where some of the patients from the Dynevor Indian Hospital were buried, along with other cemeteries as well. The general boundaries of the Diocese of Rupert’s Land can be seen here.

If your search involves Manitoba, the records are likely with the Archives of the Diocese of Rupert’s Land, with the Diocese of Brandon in Brandon, or with the Ministry of Mishamakweesh, Indigenous Spiritual (formerly the Diocese of Keewatin) Archives held at the General Synod Archives in Toronto. In many cases, researchers will be interested in these archives’ sacramental records: baptism, marriage, and burials.

The Archives of the Anglican Diocese of Rupert’s Land holds parish records than are generally more detailed than those for other churches. This includes a map (or partial map) for the St. Peter’s Dynevor Anglican cemetery that includes names in some of the plot listings. Dynevor Indian Hospital appears to have had its own section within the cemetery.

The Rupert's Land Diocese Archives also hold some burial permits for the hospital. There are also records of Anglican services held at the Dynevor Hospital and at parishioners’ homes. Although they may not be particularly detailed, a researcher might be able to find some information from them. There are also a few photos of the Dynevor Hospital, and of patients in this archive. To request records or information, email the Diocese archivist at archives@rupertsland.ca.

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

United Church: Conference of Manitoba Northwestern Ontario & All Native Circle Conference
United Church of Canada Archives
Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives
Archdiocese of Keewatin/LePas
Archdiocese of St. Boniface
Archdiocese of Winnipeg

We know that patients from the Dynevor Hospital are buried at Notre Dame Catholic Church in Selkirk, Manitoba. The Notre Dame Catholic Church holds the records for this and the St. Michael Catholic Cemetery, which might have patient burials as well. We will update this section as our research progresses.

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, St. Boniface Sanatorium, Ninette Sanatorium and possibly others. Researchers may have to get permission from the originating organization to access these records.

Services at the SHSB are offered in French and English.

The Manitoba Genealogical Society has a wealth of cemetery transcriptions, and knowledgeable volunteers. They have a transcription of burials at the St. Peter’s Dynevor Cemetery.

Records indicate that the Gilbart Funeral Home in Selkirk, Manitoba, and one of its predecessors handled the burials of at least some of the patients who passed away at the Dynevor Indian Hospital.

You can contact the Gilbart Funeral home through their website: https://www.gilbartfuneralhome.com/

Gilbart Funeral Home
309 Eveline Street
Selkirk, MB R1A 1M8
Tel: 1-204-482-3271
Fax: 1-204-482-7648

We are continuing to research funeral homes connected to the Dynevor Indian Hospital. We will update this section as our research continues.

Patients could move back and forth between Dynevor Hospital and other hospitals in the area. Dynevor did not have an operating room nor was it equipped to handle labour and delivery, for instance, so babies were likely born at the Selkirk General Hospital. Some patients may have passed away at the Selkirk Mental Health Centre.

You can make a PHIA Request for patient records if you think that the person you are looking for may have died at one of these facilities.

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.

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

The following are additional LAC files about the Dynevor 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.

CLANDEBOYE AGENCY - REPORT CONCERNING A TEACHER AT DYNERIOUS INDIAN HOSPITAL SCHOOL.

Date: 1951-1956
Reference: RG10. Volume/box number: 8448. File number: 506/23-5-015.
Textual material. [Conditions of access Open]. Government. File.
RG10, Volume number: 8448, Microfilm reel number: C-13799, C-13799, File number: 506/23-5-015

Heritage Canadiana link

CLANDEBOYE AGENCY - CORRESPONDENCE REGARDING THE DYNEVAR INDIAN HOSPITAL SCHOOL.

Date: 1946-1959
Reference: RG10. Volume/box number: 7193. File number: 506/25-1-015.
Textual material. [Conditions of access Open]. Government. File.
RG10, Volume number: 7193, Microfilm reel number: C-9699, C-9699, File number: 506/25-1-015

Heritage Canadiana link