These old photographs and records helped me find out what happened to my great-great-grandmother
Every First Nations, Métis and Inuit community knows of relations who didn't make it home from Indian residential schools, Indian hospitals and tuberculosis sanatoriums. Ever since the discovery of unmarked graves in Kamloops, B.C., we Indigenous people have redoubled our efforts to look for missing family members. To do this, we need access to records — but that isn't easy when many records are incorrect, have disappeared or have been destroyed.
The Knowing is a four-part series, which follows my family's search to discover what happened to my great-great-grandmother, Annie Carpenter. It's a story every Indigenous family knows well and is deeply intertwined with Canada's residential school system.
Hunting for records is at the heart of The Knowing and my family's quest to find Annie. The Canadian government said she and her daughter, Liz, did not exist. But my great-uncle Hank had collected records — letters, marriage records, and maps — that helped us piece together what happened to Annie and what tore her away from everything she knew.
These are some of the photos and documents that provided information about what happened to members of our family.
Joseph Carpenter and family in canoe, during the signing of Treaty 9
In 1905, Annie's brother, Joseph Carpenter, encountered Duncan Campbell Scott, who played a central role in the supervision and expansion of Indian residential schools in Canada. Scott and a treaty party were on their way to Osnaburgh in northern Ontario — the site of the first signing of Treaty 9, also known as the James Bay Treaty — when the amateur photographer snapped this picture of Joseph and his family.
Treaty 9 women
During the signing of Treaty 9 at Osnaburgh House, Ont., an old Hudson's Bay Company post, the women and children present wait for a feast to begin. Annie might be one of the women in this photograph. They are all unnamed.
Annie and Samson's marriage certificate
This marriage certificate was found by Paula Rickard, a genealogist and family historian from Moose Cree First Nation. The record of Annie's first marriage was in the archives of St. Thomas' Anglican Church in Moose Factory, Ont.. Annie signed the certificate in syllabics. It's a copy of a piece of paper she touched with her own hands.
Algoma University Archives: Samuel Skilliter
Jenna Lemay at Algoma University believes this may be a photo of all the youngest children at the Shingwauk Indian Residential School in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., when Samuel Skilliter, Talaga's great-uncle, was forced to attend. It is likely Samuel is one of the boys in the picture.
Sheila Bowen at the Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital Cemetery
After searching for Annie for decades, I managed to find her in this unmarked grave in the Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital Cemetery in Toronto, right next to the Gardiner Expressway, one of the busiest highways in Canada. There are 1,511 people buried in the cemetery, mostly patients who died at the Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital, formerly known as the Ontario Hospital, New Toronto (on what is now the grounds of Humber College). Sheila Bowen, Annie's great-granddaughter and Talaga's mother, sits by Annie's grave.
