120 ‘Missing Children’ Deaths Linked to Canadian Residential Schools

A review of 5,000 death records selected from an initial screening of 250,000 records going back to the 19th century revealed this shocking number. The Ontario’s coroner’s office began its “Missing Children Project” at the beginning of 2012 partly in response to “the large number of aboriginal children who died or went missing while in the care of the scores of government-funded, church-run residential schools, the last of which shut down in the 1990s.”

Seven Aboriginal children died in residential schools from 2000 to 2011.

“In all, about 150,000 aboriginal children were forced to leave their communities for the schools in an effort to assimilate them into mainstream Canadian society. By some estimates — especially prior to the 1940s — mortality rates reached 50 per cent.

Although some deaths were suicides, most fatalities were due either to disease or occurred after the children ran away from the schools, then had accidents, suffered hypothermia or drowned.

“They were terribly unhappy and they left,” McCallum said.

“They succumbed to various things that happen to children who are on their own in harsh environments.”

About 120 ‘missing children’ deaths tied to residential schools now ID’d

[The Spec 5/31/12 by The Canadian Press]

REFORM Puzzle Piece