St. Joseph’s Timeline – Weblog 4 – 1

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~bccaribo/StJoseph.html

This site is interesting.  It is hosted by ancestry.com which is a site that allows you to search out your ancestry, through various records, including school histories.  I stumbled on it by accident, but it piqued my interest.  It chronicles, in timeline format, the history of St. Joseph’s Mission in William’s Lake, BC.

It starts with Father James McGuckin being assigned to the William’s Lake are in 1886.  The one thing I liked about this site was that it provides background to the residential school, prior to it becoming a residential school.  The site lists the priests who have worked at the mission, as well as a list of many of the marriages that took place at the mission, starting in 1873.

The mission school officially started in 1872, serving 11 “white” and “half-white” boys.  Aboriginals were not allowed to attend.  This piece is important because, although perhaps prevalent at the time, the school began as a racially segregated school.  Within, 6 years the school population was 75 – 42 boys & 33 girls.

In 1886, St. Joseph’s Mission became a residential school.  The white children were forced to attend other schools in the William’s Lake area.  The ‘Sister’s of St. Anne’ were the primary teachers. In 1957, the school burned down, but was rebuilt.  In 1981, St. Joseph’s became the “Cariboo Indian Education and Training Centre.”

What I like about this site is the easy to follow format and although heavy with non-necessary items (for my purposes) such as wedding listings, it does provide some interesting background to the school.  I will likely only use this site for some brief background to the school, and to highlight the fact that after it closed, it was made into something positive, the Cariboo Indian Education and Training Center (which I believe is now called the Cariboo Chilcotin Aboriginal Training Employment Centre or CCATEC)

TM