The Catholic Archdiocese of Grouard-McLennan, with funding from Library and Archives Canada’s Documentary Heritage Communities Program, has digitized and uploaded to its website almost 3,000 photos pertaining to life on the residential schools in northwestern Alberta.
The photos are organized into the six missions that were home to residential schools. Click on the hyperlinked name of a mission to see hundreds of photos. Beneath each photo is the letter i in a circle. Click on the i to see the photo caption in English and French.
Source: IRS Photo Galleries, Archdiocese of Grouard-McLennan.
The archdiocese holds nearly 30,000 photographic images of the people and places in northwestern Alberta, dating back to the late 1800s. In 2019, the archdiocese received $23,389 from the Documentary Heritage Communities Program and digitized about 6,000 images with the objective of making historical materials in the archives more widely available.
On its website, the archdiocese says, “Given its role in the Indian Residential School (IRS) system, and as a party to the IRS Settlement Agreement, the Archdiocese participated at the seven national events hosted by Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2010-2014. The images from the six missions that were home to residential schools were well-received at these events and became the first images chosen for the image digitization and protection project of our Archives.”
