“to take a normal place in the business and social world”: The Work of Women’s Voluntary and Service Associations in Residential Schools and Indian Hospitals

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Kristin Burnett and Shannon Stettner

This essay is part of a series. See the other entries here.

Black and white photograph of a large three-storey brick building.
Edmonton YWCA building on 12th Ave. S.W. 1960s (Glenbow Archives)

In late 2019, we were awarded a contract to produce a report about the role played by YWCA Canada in the Residential School and Indian Hospital systems in Canada. As we previously noted, the report is available on request (reconciliation@ywcacanada.ca). We were excited by the opportunity because we saw it as a chance to further our understanding of the ways the settler colonial project was enacted across Canadian social, political, and economic institutions including, in this instance, through women’s voluntary and service associations and social welfare agencies. Given the operating restrictions to Library and Archives Canada during the Covid 19 global pandemic, our access to the archives was very limited. As such, we understand our work to be very preliminary.

Nevertheless, we were fortunate to uncover a particularly rich source that offered a glimpse into YWCA Canada’s post-WWII service work in Residential Schools and Indian Hospitals across Canada. In 1968, YWCA Canada’s Intercultural Coordinator issued a call to member associations seeking examples of work carried out with Indigenous Peoples and communities. The request was made with the hope that the “exchange of program ideas and social action w[ould] stimulate many more creative activities,”[1] and reflected a growing interest within YWCA Canada to extend its work more formally to Indigenous Peoples and communities. Member Associations across Canada responded by outlining activities that primarily covered the 1960s, with some references to the 1940s and 1950s, with the most detailed response coming from the Edmonton YWCA branch. In response, they submitted a report from February 1964 that was originally prepared for Indian Affairs, which, at the time, was housed in the Department of Citizenship and Immigration (DCI). The focus on preparing Indigenous Peoples for off-reserve employment and Indigenous women for European-Canadian domesticity was a cornerstone of Indian policy after WWII. Heidi Bohaker’s and Franca Iacovetta’s examination of citizenship programs showed that across the 1950s and 1960s, the DCI “sponsor[ed], fund[ed], monitor[ed] the activities of voluntary groups (such as church organizations) and volunteer agencies and academic experts dealing with [Indigenous] Peoples in urban settings.” [2] The YWCA was well situated to support the DCI’s efforts.

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Respecting Data Sovereignty Starts With the Stories We Tell About the Past

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Miranda Jimmy

This post is part of a series. See the other entries here.

Photo of a typed passage. It reads "Anecdotes by Ruth Fadum. G[redacted], Ward 5A, a little girl was in a body cast. She had T.B. of the spine. She was in a crib with a cover on to keep her in it. When Governor General, The Rt. Hon. Mr. Massey visited, she quietly looked at him, with her mischievous eyes, and he said, "I'll bet you're a holy terror when I'm not here." This was so true because she found all kinds of ways to lower the side of her crib and get out. [Redacted] was sent down from..." The remainder of the text is cut off.
Provincial Archives of Alberta PR1991.0443/21 (redacted)

Last year I was invited to the Owning History: Indigenous Histories and Records Access Conference organized by Dr. Mary Jane McCallum at the University of Winnipeg to talk about my experiences working with residential school survivors and their loved ones to access archives. As one of the only non-academics in the room, I titled my presentation, “Novice Navigator: Tales of My Time Breaking Down Barriers in Public Archives,” to reflect how I situated myself as a curious disrupter within institutions of colonial memory. Having spent more than a decade in public archives looking for the truth about my family’s history, and supporting other Indigenous community members in their searches, it has become very clear to me that public archives are withholding information from those who need it the most in order to preserve a heroic vision of Canadian history premised upon deeply racist beliefs about Indigenous Peoples. An obvious example of this is how many First Nations, Inuit, and Métis people remain unnamed in photographs and historical narratives while lengthy lineages exist for their white counterparts.

My volunteer work has primarily been centered on publicly held records related to residential schools and Indian hospitals in government and private records, working well outside the confines of academia and blurring the lines between living memory and documented proof. The more I looked, the more obvious the intention to hide the truth was, both in the records that existed and in the ignorance of the people who manage those records to do so in a responsible way that presents a balanced understanding of the past. I feel the need to learn what I can about archival practices and processes to help the people who needed the information – survivors and their loved ones – and figure out how to infiltrate the system that was keeping the information from those who needed it most.

As I reflect further on archives and western approaches to historical research, it is clear that institutions of colonial memory are consistently used against Indigenous Peoples as a weapon. This unjust weaponization comes from what is considered accurate information, who has access to its collection, management, and manipulation, and who has the right to challenge its validity. When it comes to representation of Indigenous Peoples in the archives, the responsibility of ‘the what’ and ‘the who’ has often rested solely within documentation obtained from colonial governments and their agents.

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Untangling the Web: Church and Public Accountability in National Reconciliation 

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Evan J. Habkirk and Alanaise Ferguson

This essay is part of a series. See the other entries here.

Poster with the following text. Moving Toward Reconciliation: National Conversations about Local Reconciliation Online Conference Saturday, June 14, 2025 10:00 am - 1:00 pm PDT This event will be a conversation about local reconciliation with people who have inherited this work and spiritual lineage within the diocese, witnessed and responded to by scholars in residential school histories, church leadership, and Indigenous Peoples. Speakers: Dr. Wendy L. Fletcher, PhD Professor of Religious Studies and History Dr. Alan L. Hayes, PhD Toronto School of Theology Dr. Alanaise Ferguson, PhD, R Psych Indigenous Studies, UBCO Dr. Evan Habkirk, PhD Indigenous Studies, UBCO Kathryn E. Lockhart, MDE Archivist, Anglican Diocese of Kootenay Search "Moving Toward Reconciliation" on Eventbrite for the Registration Page Photos: Women's Auxiliary, St. Michael & All Angels Anglican Church, Kelowna, BC 1912 St. Michael & All Angels, Kelowna First church 1907 Diocese of Kootenay Archives
Knowledge sharing event poster from June 2025.

When the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) submitted their final report in 2015, Canadians saw how the federal government and national Catholic and Protestant churches created one of the most destructive systems of cultural genocide. Missing from this analysis was an explanation of how these institutions and the national Residential School program implicated and needed the support of everyday Canadians. 

In 2023, Drs. Habkirk and Ferguson entered into a partnership with the archives of the Anglican Diocese of Kootenay. For the project, Kathryn Lockhart, archivist for the Diocese, gave us access to 2,000 scans of handwritten documents generated between 1910-1988 by the Women’s Auxiliary (WA) in 13 parishes. Habkirk and Ferguson trained 40 undergraduate Indigenous Studies students in historical transcription methods ensuring that this evidence could be converted to searchable and indexable typed text. These records contained the meeting minutes of WAs from individual churches who provided fundraising and material goods for 17 Anglican Residential Schools in Canada.

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Who decides our place names? Power, Policy, and Memory in Edmonton

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Matthew Dance

This post is part of a series. See the other entries here.

Black-and-white group photo of five men and one woman. It is labeled "City of Edmonton Archives EA-10-2379."
Figure 1: District Names Advisory Committee, 1956. City of Edmonton Archives.

As a structure and not an event, settler colonialism is often accomplished through seemingly banal acts. Through bureaucracy and the establishment and implementation of policy and process, settler colonialism can deeply impact a place, small decision by small decision, gradually over time. Naming, or renaming, a street, neighbourhood, or town is such an act.

Previous writing in Active History, such as Sean Graham’s Changing Place Names, reminds us that most place names in Canada were imposed under colonialism and the processes to rename places today often raise questions of whose history is being acknowledged, whose erased, and how communities reckon with those legacies. Equally, Thomas Peace’s What’s in a Place Name: Adelaide Hoodless and Mona Parsons uses the stories of individuals to show that the naming schools and parks after people sends messages about whose contributions are seen as worthy of public remembrance.

As a geographer, I’ve long been fascinated by how people understand their environments. After completing my B.A., I spent several years working as a field technician across northern Canada. One summer in the early 1990s, while on Devon Island, I heard Inuktitut on the radio during our daily check-ins. Only then did I begin to grasp that people had lived and thrived there long before settlers arrived — a realization that set me on a long, sometimes uneven journey toward learning the missing geographies absent from my 1980s education.

Decades later, during my M.A., I discovered that Edmonton lacked a place-name dataset, so I created one based on Naming Edmonton: From Ada to Zoie. Working with the data revealed how few Indigenous names existed and how most commemorations honoured European men. Women, people of colour, and Indigenous peoples were largely excluded. Curious about how naming might become more inclusive, and eager to build a more comprehensive dataset, I joined the City of Edmonton’s Naming Committee to explore what a more representative process could look like.

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Holding Ourselves Accountable: Reconciliation and Truth Telling in a Post Truth World

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Kristin Burnett and Shannon Stettner

The cover of the Final Report fo the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. Volume One: Summary, Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future. There is a collage of historic photos of children.

The mandate of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was to “inform Canadians about the history and lasting impacts of the Residential School system by documenting the experiences of Survivors, their families, and communities.” From 2008 to 2015, when the final report and Calls to Action were issued, the TRC hosted seven national events and collected more than 6,750 recorded statements from Survivors and millions of archival records. Centering the experiences and voices of Survivors, the TRC generated voluminous reports detailing the purpose and histories of Residential Schools in Canada and the roles played by the churches and the state.

This was followed in 2024 by the report from the Independent Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites, Kimberly Murray, entitled “Sites of Truth, Sites of Conscience: Unmarked Burials and Mass Graves of Missing and Disappeared Indigenous Children in Canada.” Building on the work of the TRC, her report provided a glimpse into the ways children were frequently disappeared as they were transferred across and between health-related institutions (i.e. hospitals, sanatoria, institutes for children with disabilities), church-run institutions (schools, Good Shepherd Home/Institutions, reformatories, training schools, etc.), child welfare agencies, homes for unwed mothers, rescue homes, and the “working out/outing system.”[1] Many Canadians worked in, adjacent to, or contributed financially to these institutions and none of them operated in isolation either ideologically or materially from the broader Canadian society. Unfortunately, the extent of these interconnections remains underacknowledged and unexplored, especially in the face of growing Residential School denialism and the lack of progress on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 94 Calls to Action.[2]

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Canadian Armed Forces Purge – What’s Old is News

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By Sean Graham

This week I talk with Lynne Gouliquer and Carmen Poulin ahead of their Shannon lecture on Monday November 24 entitled “Purging the Canadian Military of ‘Sexual Deviants’: The War on 2SLGBTQIA+ Members and Their Partners from the 1960s to Present.’ We talk about the administrative order that established the policy of purging homosexuals from the military and how it was executed. We also discuss Lynne and Carmen’s research, their interviews with members who were purged, and the long-term implications on families.

Historical Headline of the Week

Brian Bradley, “She was among those purged from Canada’s military. Today, Michelle Douglas looks back on the pain and progress,” Toronto Star, April 2, 2023

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“An Historic Day”: Concern and Celebration of the Vatican’s Repatriation of Indigenous Culture

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By Andrew Nurse

On November 15, a media release announced that Pope Leo XIV, following an audience with members of the Canadian Roman Catholic hierarchy, “gifted sixty-two artefacts belonging to the ethnological collections of Vatican Museums.”  This meant that the Vatican would begin a process of repatriating some aspects of Indigenous culture currently held in its museums to First Nations, Métis, and Inuit peoples in Canada.

Vatican Ethnological Museum

The Vatican’s decision was, almost certainly, made following a great deal of hard work behind the scenes. I was not, and have not been, part of this work but it seems to me particularly important to note that repatriation doesn’t just happen. It follows work that takes place in a range of Indigenous communities on a daily basis. It takes place outside the immediate splash of a media release, and we need to credit the people doing that work.

I also think we need to ask questions about this particular process and its implications.

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Duty in Drag: The Life of First World War Drag Star Ross Hamilton

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Aly Firth

Ross Hamilton of the Dumbells as Marjorie, ready to perform ‘Widows are wonderful,’ 1918. Coururtesy of the Toronto Public Library.

Drag is a staple of the 2SLGBTQ+ community today, however, many would not associate drag performance with the First World War, much less as an essential component for boosting morale. The rich history of drag has strong roots in Atlantic Canada; one notable example being Ross Hamilton, the famed female impersonator from the concert party troupe the Dumbells. During and following the First World War, Hamilton not only brought pride to Canada with his ability to craft the perfect illusion of womanhood, but also to Nova Scotia, as a resident of the province. Although queer desire was criminalized by the Canadian military, drag entertainment was seen as a necessity to support the flagging morale of troops.  

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The Day Manitoba Fell to Nazi Germany

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Avery Monette

In the early morning hours of Thursday, February 19, 1942, residents of Winnipeg and the surrounding towns were shaken from their sleep by the sound of air raid sirens. German Luftwaffe bomber planes had begun their attack on the Prairies and by 9:30 am, Winnipeg had fallen into the clutches of the Nazis. Renamed Himmlerstadt (Himmler City) in honour of Nazi Minister of the Interior Heinrich Himmler, uniformed Nazi soldiers marched through the streets as swastika banners were raised on municipal buildings across the city. Radio programs were delivered in German. The front page of the Winnipeg Tribune newspaper – renamed Das Winnipeger Lügenblatt – was printed in traditional Fraktur script and written in German rather than English, save for a square in the centre of the page that outlined ten proclamations made by the new Nazi administrator of Himmlerstadt, Col. Erich von Nurenberg. Among a list of suspended civil rights, gatherings of more than eight people were banned, and citizens were to be executed without trial for the offence of organizing any form of resistance to the Nazi authorities. If Winnipeg could be wiped off the map in place of Himmlerstadt in the matter of a few hours, how soon would the rest of Canada fall to Nazi Germany?

Black and white historical photograph showing a German soldier in a military uniform and helmet reading a document, standing among a group of civilians in coats and caps

“Nazi” soldiers attacking a Winnipeg Free Press newsie, February 19, 1942. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Of course, this did not really happen. The Nazi occupation of Winnipeg on February 19, 1942 was indeed a simulation of what it would be like if the Germans were to invade. Meticulously organized by the Winnipeg Board of Trade and announced ahead of time to the residents of the city, ‘If Day’ was a creative fundraiser for Canadian victory bonds and quite a successful one. By March 3, Manitobans had raised $65 million dollars in victory bonds with contributions from Winnipeg residents totaling nearly $37 million.[1]

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Jim’s Vision: Some Reflections on J.R. Miller

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Donald Wright

When I learned that Jim Miller had died, I reached out to his partner, Lesley Biggs, to express my condolences. A few weeks later, she invited me to share a few words about him that would be read at his celebration of life. “It would be my honour,” I replied. And I meant it. Jim was something of a hero to me back in the day, when I was a graduate student and junior professor starting my academic career.

I first “met” Jim in the fall of 1993. I say “met” because I didn’t actually meet him. I was a first-year PhD student at the University of Ottawa, and he was a professor at the University of Saskatchewan. But I did read “Owen Glendower, Hotspur, and Canadian Indian Policy,” an article that he had published just a few years earlier.

Portrait photograph of an older man wearing a suit, with brown eyes and a warm closed-mouth smile

Picture of J.R. Miller, courtesy of Lesley Biggs

As a green-as-grass graduate student, I thought that it was about the coolest thing I had ever read. The title alone was worth the price of admission. What did two characters from Shakespeare’s Henry IV have to do with Canada’s “Indian” policy in the late Victorian era? A lot, in fact.

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