From the 1880s until 1996, when Canada s last residential school closed, the government-funded and primarily church-run schools separated 150,000 Indigenous children across the country from their families, in an effort to assimilate children. Many experienced horrific physical, mental and sexual abuse.
In testimony to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, some former residents of the Birtle school described abuse there like having their ears pulled or heads shaken if they gave wrong answers in class and being segregated from their siblings.
A 2017 photo of the former residential school in Birtle, Man., from the Great Plains Publications book Abandoned Manitoba: From Residential Schools to Bank Vaults to Grain Elevators, by historian Gordon Goldsborough.(Great Plains Publications)