By Barry Ellsworth
TRENTON, Canada (AA) – Another 220 deaths have been uncovered at notorious Canadian Indian Residential Schools, according to a coroner’s report released Monday.
The additional number brings the known total of deaths to 656 in the province of Ontario. The figure was found through exhaustive searches of files and formerly protected records of criminal probes by the Residential Schools Deaths Investigation Team.
Infectious disease was found to be the number one cause of the deaths, but the search also uncovered cases of tragic and horrific deaths that today would be labeled as criminal negligence, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) reported.
Many of the deaths went unreported and the coroner’s probe is expected to put names to the victims as the search continues.
"In terms of the end result, we're bringing answers to families that never had them," said investigative team leader Mark Mackisoc, an Ontario Provincial Police sergeant.
The additional deaths were unearthed after a careful search of the records at the St. Anne’s Residential School located in Ontario’s far north, St. Joseph’s Training School for Boys near Ottawa and the Mohawk Institute Indian Residential School in Brantford, near Toronto. All the approximately 131 schools which were operated beginning in the 1830s are closed.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission which traveled the country probing residential school deaths estimates the number at 4,500, mostly children, who were buried in sometimes unmarked graves. In a number of cases families were not notified of the deaths of their children.
Chief Coroner Dr. Dirk Huyer said the findings carried on the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
“Those children have disappeared,” he said. “The vast majority don’t know anything, or very much, about what happened to these children.”