Thanks to a $23,389 grant from Library and Archives Canada’s Documentary Heritage Communities Program, the Catholic Archdiocese of Grouard-McLennan in Grande Prairie, Alberta will open residential school photo archives to the public.
The group plans to share more than 3,000 photos it gathered during the churches’ involvement with six residential schools.
The archdiocese was among 52 organizations who received funds this year from the Documentary Heritage Communities Program.
Executive Assistant to the Archbishop Lauri Friesen told My Grand Prairie Now the archdiocese will use the money to put part of its photo archives online.
“We know that we can pull out about 6,000 photos related to those six Indian residential school communities. We’re going to digitize them and put them online — about half of them. We’re also going to create photo albums for each of those communities, and that way they can take them and exhibit them in their communities.”
Organizations who have applied for funding from the Documentary Heritage Comunities Program and been turned down should not give up.
This is the fourth time the archdiocese has applied for the grant, but the first time it has been approved. It was a matter of them learning how to write an effective grant application.
