Norway House Indian Hospital

This page will be updated periodically as our research on the Norway House Indian Hospital continues.

In addition to the Indian hospitals that the federal Indian Health Services (IHS) funded through its agreement with the Sanatorium Board of Manitoba, IHS directly administered three smaller Indian hospitals in Manitoba that treated First Nations patients, including those with tuberculosis. These three hospitals were located at Peguis First Nation (Fisher River Indian Hospital), Pine Falls/Sagkeeng First Nation (Fort Alexander Indian Hospital), and Norway House Cree Nation (Norway House Indian Hospital).

These hospitals often had connections with the Indian hospitals and sanatoriums operated by the Manitoba Sanatorium Board, and their patients were sometimes moved from the three smaller hospitals to the larger, better-equipped TB care centers. In 1943, for example, several Cross Lake Residential School students suffering from tuberculosis were sent to the Norway House Indian Hospital. At least two of these students, Nora Ross and Etienne Frogg, passed away at the Brandon Indian Sanatorium.

In 1950, Indian Affairs teamed up with the federal and provincial governments to build a winter road to run between the Saskatchewan and Ontario borders. This road was constructed primarily to facilitate the movement of patients from the Norway House Indian Hospital to the larger and better equipped Clearwater Lake Indian Hospital near The Pas. With the new road, according to the doctor in charge of the Norway House Indian Hospital, patients could be moved by bombardier rather than having to be flown to Clearwater Lake Hospital.

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, stepparent 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 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.

Many of the deaths that occurred at the Norway House 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.

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.

Broadly, Library and Archives Canada’s (LAC) 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.

Both the Conference of Manitoba Northwestern Ontario & All Native Circle Conference and the United Church of Canada Archives may have records relating to the Norway House (Rossville) Cemetery, where some of the patients who passed away at the Norway House Indian Hospital were buried. You can contact these archives directly using the links below to discuss your research with their archivists.

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

The Archdiocese of Keewatin-Le Pas Archives may have burial records for patients who died at the Norway House Indian Hospital. 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 records for St. Mark's Anglican Church at Norway House the Anglican Church of Canada General Synod Archives in Toronto.

These records include a parish journal and parish registers that record baptisms, marriages, and burials of the people of Norway House and the surrounding area. These records may show information such as first and last names, date of birth, place of birth, cause of death, date of death, date and place of burial. Cemeteries include the Hudson’s Bay Company cemetery, St. Mark’s Anglican cemetery, Jack River cemetery, and the Rossville cemetery.

The General Synod Archives’ access policy restricts the browsing of parish registers because of the personal information recorded. However, if you believe that they may have records relating to the death or burial of a loved one, searches can be requested by filling out the Parish Register Inquiry Form with the names and dates already known. The form states the fee of $25.00, which includes the search, copy of the original record, and a certified transcription, if required for submission to the government. Some exceptions to the fees apply.

For more information, please contact The General Synod Archives at archives@national.anglican.ca.

Patients could move back and forth between hospitals. These could include municipal hospitals, public sanatoriums, and Indian Hospitals and Sanatoriums, You may want to make a request under the Personal Health Information Act (PHIA) for patient records if you think that the person you are looking at might have died at one of these facilities.

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, including the Sanatorium 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 (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.

The MITHP team has not yet complied Federal Voters Lists for the Norway House Indian Hospital, but Ancestry.ca has voters’ lists for select years from 1949 through the 1960s. These records are located behind a paywall, but some libraries offer public access to Ancestry. Voters lists for provincial or municipal elections are not included here.

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