Manitoba: Missing Indigenous tuberculosis patients

U of W researcher wants to empower families, communities to navigate records, government agencies

Sarah Petz · CBC News · November 15

The Ninette Sanatorium opened in May 1909 and over the next several decades, the facility grew into the largest sanatorium in the province, comprising over a dozen buildings and taking in thousands of tuberculosis patients. With advances in medicine it was eventually not required and closed in 1972. (Gordon Goldsborough/Manitoba Historical Society)

A University of Winnipeg researcher is developing an online research tool to help Indigenous communities and families find missing tuberculosis patients who were sent to Manitoba hospitals and sanatoriums but never came home. 

Anne Lindsay is a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Winnipeg and will be working with the university's Manitoba Indigenous Tuberculosis History Project on the initiative. 

Lindsay has spent several years working as an archivist and researcher. Her experience includes working with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Some of her work has involved helping families research connections to residential and Indian hospital schools, and find where missing residential school children may be buried. 

Due to privacy laws, the tool won't be a database of records of missing tuberculosis patients, but will instead empower families and communities to do their own research, Lindsay said. 

"I think it needs to be something that is not just a set of links, but that gives people some information about where to start looking and how to use the information from that to get other information, and sort of helps to give people a bit more of a step-by-step understanding of how to perform their own research," she said. 

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