A new number today, 751, to add to the older one, 215, while we wait for next one, as the dreadful toll of Canada’s residential schools, buried for too long, rises, and rises.

The undated photograph above was taken at Bishop Horden Hall Indian Residential School, which was run by the Anglican Church at Moose Factory, Ontario, on the Moose River, at the southern end of James Bay. It operated for 70 years, starting in 1906. In 1964, it was converted from a school to a hostel. It closed in 1976.  

The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation has a detailed history of the school online, here, including harrowing (and surely incomplete) records of cruelty and sickness. An entry registering the 1940 deaths from tuberculosis of two male students notes that the Indian Agent reported that one boy’s family was “not notified of sickness or death of child as there was no way to send word.” 

The NCTR has a memorial page — it’s here — for Bishop Horden. It lists the names of 25 children known to have died as a result of their time at the school.