Matching the Oblates’ list to OISR

What’s here

Background

The corporate website for the Oblates of Mary Immaculate (Oblates) advises that “OMI Lacombe Canada was founded in 2003 in response to the changing face of the Roman Catholic Church in Canada. We are part of the worldwide congregation of priests and brothers called The Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate who serve the poor in more than 60 countries on five continents. The Oblates first arrived in Canada in 1841. As the young country grew we grew with it, quickly moving west and serving First Nations, Inuit and Metis people along with the early immigrant communities from Europe, and founding most of the dioceses west of Ottawa.”
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Oblates’ list of their Indian Residential Schools

The Oblates’ website lists 48 Indian Residential Schools in which the Oblates worked and the years the Oblates were the administrators of each institution.¹ We compared the Oblates’ list and our list and found that these 14 Indian Residential Schools were missing from the Oblates’ list:

Table 1. Missing Indian Residential Schools from the Oblates’ list of their operations (2022).
IRS_ID	IRS_NAME	IRS_AKA	LOCATION
17	Lac La Biche	Notre Dame des Victoires	Lac La Biche, AB
22	St. Albert	Youville	St. Albert, AB
29	Anahim Lake		Anahim, BC
46	Brandon		Brandon, MB
49	Notre Dame Hostel		Cross Lake, MB
67	Fort Simpson	Lapointe Hall	Fort Simpson, NT
70	Fort Smith	Grandin College	Fort Smith, NT
72	Inuvik	Grollier Hall	Inuvik, NT
78	Chesterfield Inlet	Turquetil Hall	Chesterfield Inlet, NU
108	Amos	Amos Student Residence; St-Marc Residence; St-Marc-de-Figuery	Amos, PQ
118	Pointe Bleue		Pointe Bleue, PQ
119	Sept-Iles		Sept-Iles, PQ
129	Fort Pelly	Kamsack	Kamsack/Fort Pelly, SK
144	Whitehorse	Coudert Hall	Whitehorse, YK

We are publishing the Oblates’ list of their Indian Residential Schools as an Open Spreadsheet Document (ODS) with the following data fields:

Table 2. Data fields in the Oblates’ list of their Indian Residential Schools (2022).
Field	Description
IRS_ID	Identifier for the institution in oirs_2022-12-17-1
OMI_SOURCE	OMI Lacombe website, In which Residential Schools did the Oblates work? (2022).
OMI_SOURCE_URL	https://omilacombe.ca/helpful-documents-and-resources/
OMI_IRS_NAME	Primary name assigned to the institution.
OMI_LOCATION	Town/city, province/territory.
OMI_DATES	Opening and closing dates.

On inspection, the Oblates’ list seems to provide an option for addressing at least some of the discrepancies among the primary names and aliases that have been assigned to Indian Residential Schools by other authorities.
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Recap

We have published five datasets related to 62 Indian Residential Schools that were managed by the Oblates:

oirs_2022-12-17-1: our initial dataset of basic identifying information that was derived mainly from the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (2015).
oirs_sched-e-f_2007: Canada’s initial list of Indian Residential Schools that were covered by the IRSSA (2007).
oirs_aandc_2015: the Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada’s version of Canada’s final list of Indian Residential Schools covered by the IRSSA (2015).
oirs_ocn_2015: the Official Court Notice’s version of Canada’s final list of Indian Residential Schools that were covered by the IRSSA (2015).
oirs_oblates_2022: the Oblates’ list of their Indian Residential Schools (2022).

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Next steps

So far our datasets have provided basic information (town/city, province/territory) about the location of the Oblates’ Indian Residential Schools. We next look to incorporate more precise geolocation data into the picture.

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Credits

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. If you use this work, please credit Paul Allen, paul@hartallen.com.