Woman searching records from Camsell hospital to find families of patients who died there [Video]

A northern Alberta woman is hoping her family’s history can help reunite other families with loved ones laid to rest far from home.

In 2019, Shannon Cornelsen was handed a box of her grandfather’s journals documenting his time as an Indian Affairs agent

Norman McGinnis was famous in his family for being a devoted notetaker, filling 27 books with the details of his workdays at the Stony Plain Indian Reservation (now Enoch Cree Nation) between 1954 and 1980.

Entries offer a look at where he went and why he was there, if it was sunny or snowing, and how much he spent on lunch and other expenses – including a $1 dinner in Lac St. Anne on April 23, 1958.

“But it was not that content that I was interested in,” Cornelsen said. “It was the fact that he detailed the burials of patients from the Charles Camsell Indian hospital.”

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