'Indian hospital' survivors want in on residential school agreement - Thunder Bay - CBC News

23.9.17

'Indian hospital' survivors want in on residential school agreement - Thunder Bay - CBC News: At times the two institutions were nearly indistinguishable, according to researcher Edward Sadowski, who submitted the request for direction.

"Because of the shortages of beds at sanatoriums and hospital schools, residential schools received a subsidy of 15 cents per day per student for each student who had TB," Sadowski writes. "Some residential schools had TB case rates as high as 80 per cent, becoming de facto sanatoriums."

Historian Maureen Lux researches Indian hospitals and agrees the ties between the institutions were very close, with Indian Affairs paying for the teachers and the books, while the Department of National Health and Welfare paid for sanatoriums.

"For patients, very often they would come from the residential schools and spend time in the hospital and then be returned to the schools so there was a kind of seamlessness between institutions," Lux said.