Research Tips: Transfers of Residential School Students between Hospitals

In 1948, the federal government set out a protocol for notifying families of residential school students or the principals of residential schools when a student who had been admitted to a hospital was transferred to a different facility. It is not clear how often or how closely this protocol was followed, but the policy stated:

The Indian Health Services have recently instructed the superintendents of Indian hospitals that in the event of it being necessary to transfer a child from one hospital to another, the Indian Agent or the Residential School Principal should be notified. These officials can then inform the Indian parents of the transfer.

This extract indicates that Indian agents and school principals were supposed to be notified if students were transferred to hospitals. This means that school and Indian agent files may contain information about individual children, particularly their correspondence files. Some (but not all) of these files are digitized and available online, although files that include lists of students’ names may be restricted and have to be accessed through an Access to Information request to Library and Archives Canada.