‘Very profound’: Hundreds of residential school photos found in Rome archives
WINNIPEG — Raymond Frogner says when he found images of residential school students in the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate archives in Rome, he knew he was looking at something important.
“It did have a very historic feeling to it, very profound,” the head archivist for the Winnipeg-based Centre for Truth and Reconciliation said in a recent interview with The Canadian Press.
Few archivists are able to explore the religious order’s private records in the Italian city, Frogner said. But he spent five days early last month looking through the archives at the Oblate General House, where photos, personnel files and manuscripts describe the group’s actions around the world since its founding in 1816.
That legacy includes a significant presence in Canada.