Coroner's probe finds 220 additional deaths at Ontario residential schools

WARNING: This story contains details of deaths at residential schools.

An Ontario coroner's investigation has identified 220 additional deaths linked to Indian residential schools in the province — deaths that were previously unknown to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission or the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR).

The NCTR's memorial register lists 436 documented deaths at Ontario residential schools, so the confirmation of 220 more would bring the combined total of known deaths in the province to 656, and counting.

The Residential Schools Death Investigation Team, assembled by Ontario's Office of the Chief Coroner in 2021, confirmed the details mainly through line-by-line analysis of public and protected records complemented by extensive archival research.

"In terms of the end result, we're bringing answers to families that never had them," said team leader Mark Mackisoc, an Ontario Provincial Police sergeant.

Under the authority of the Coroners Act, Mackisoc's team negotiated with numerous entities for access to records, including the NCTR's databases and police investigation files from criminal probes at three institutions.

Those investigations occurred at St. Anne's Indian Residential School near Fort Albany and St. Joseph's Training School for Boys near Ottawa, which both secured multiple convictions in the 1990s, while a recent criminal probe at the former Mohawk Institute Indian Residential School in Brantford was turned over to the coroner in 2023.

The number one cause of death the team encountered was infectious disease, but the files also reveal tragic and even horrific deaths that would likely meet the bar for criminal negligence if they occurred today, Mackisoc said, pointing to three examples.

In 1936, pupil no. 0991 at the Mohawk Institute died when the playground equipment she was playing on broke, sending a metal wheel crashing into her midsection, causing intra-abdominal hemorrhaging from which she later died in hospital, according to school records. Her name was Effie Smith. She was 13 years old.

In 1939, pupil no. 791 at the Mount Elgin Indian Residential School near London fell nine metres from an unscreened window, suffering intracranial hemorrhaging and fractured cervical vertebrae, school records state. He was being kept in bed alone due to illness, while the screen was removed for repairs but not immediately replaced, an attending physician wrote. His name was Courtland (Cody) Claus. He was four years old.

At the St. Joseph's Training School, three children were asked to get inside a tank to clean it out so it could be used to hold water. It had previously contained some kind of noxious substance, said Mackisoc, and the boys were using an incandescent light to illuminate it while cleaning. 

The last boy to exit knocked over the light, which ignited the fumes inside and caused an explosion. He died in the inferno.

The coroner's findings are significant but unsurprising for Laura Arndt, executive lead at the Survivors' Secretariat, a non-profit organization representing survivors of the Mohawk Institute.

"The fact that his involvement has already brought forward 220-plus additional names speaks to the kind of expertise we need involved in this work," she said.