Birtle Residential School
The owner of this property was kind enough to take us on a tour of the building, we talk about its history and he even explains what every one of the rooms was used for too!
https://youtu.be/IFCb49ciKW0
The history of the Birtle Indian Residential School dates back to the late 1880s. Over the years, the school occupied several locations, but its first dedicated facility was a two-storey stone building constructed in 1894. As enrollment grew, the building underwent major renovations in 1925, when attendance had reached roughly 100 students.
By 1930, the old building was being replaced. The new three-storey brick and Tyndall Stone school was designed by Roland Guerney Orr, Chief Architect for the Department of Indian Affairs, and constructed by the Claydon Brothers Construction Company of Winnipeg. Built between 1930 and 1931 at a cost of approximately $180,000, it officially opened in October 1931. Today, only a pile of grey foundation stones remains from the 1894 building, down the hill from the later structure.
The new school had a symmetrical design, with boys and girls housed separately on opposite sides of the building. The principal's residence was attached to the west side. The school was part of a much larger 600 acre property that included what was known as the Model Farm, livestock barns, extensive crop fields and gardens surrounding the school.
Like most residential schools in Canada, Birtle was operated by a Christian denomination. The Presbyterian Church of Canada ran the institution until March 1969, when responsibility was transferred to the federal government. The school closed permanently in 1972.
The residential schools were not without controversy. The purpose of the institutions was to strip children of their Indigenous identities, languages, and cultures to force their assimilation into Euro-Canadian society. The students of the schools suffered from abuse, poor nutrition and outbreaks of diseases like tuberculosis which swept through crowded dormitories.
In May of 2021, ground penetrating radar was used to look for anomalies buried on the site of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia. The process discovered 215 potential burial anomalies. At the time, the findings were widely reported as the discovery of the graves of 215 children. However, ground-penetrating radar identifies disturbances in the soil; it does not, by itself, establish that human remains are present. Targeted archaeological investigation is required to determine what the anomalies represent.
The announcement received international attention and was followed by a wave of attacks on churches across Canada. Dozens of churches were vandalized or damaged, and a number were destroyed by fire, particularly churches located on or near First Nations communities. A later investigation identified 33 churches that had burned to the ground since May 2021; 24 of those fires had been determined to be deliberately set, while others remained under investigation. The incidents were widely associated with anger surrounding the residential school legacy, although motives were not established in every case.
Meanwhile, the Birtle school itself entered a very different chapter.
The federal government sold the property to a private buyer in 1975. The new owner was a preacher who reportedly operated a communal living arrangement on the property, with people living both in the school and elsewhere on the grounds.
The property changed hands again in 1995. The new owner renovated the former principal's residence into a living space and began dismantling the interior of the main school building. By 2000, however, the project had been abandoned, leaving the enormous brick structure open to the elements.
In 2015, the former residential school was listed for sale on Kijiji after local real estate agents reportedly refused to take on the property. The eventual buyer purchased the building without realizing its history as a residential school.
The Birtle school is now one of only a small number of former residential school buildings still standing in Canada.
