In 1952, children at the Alberni Indian Residential School wrote letters that ended up in the files of the Red Cross Nutrition Services. Historian Ian Mosby, who read them six decades later, said they showed children longing for nutritious food they recognised from home. By then, the federal researchers who had followed the same children for years were close to the end of their studies. The letters are a small part of a larger record: a decade of nutrition experiments on First Nations people, carried out in northern Manitoba and then as residential school nutrition experiments on First Nations children in six schools, one of them in the Alberni Valley, across the island from Nanaimo.

This account sets out what that record shows, who was involved, how it became public in 2013, and what survivors and their communities asked for once it did.

How the research began in 1942

The experiments grew out of a visit. In 1942, a team of Canadian researchers travelled to First Nations reserves in northern Manitoba, where many families were going hungry, and produced a nutritional survey dated March 15, 1942, according to Ha-Shilth-Sa, the newspaper of the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council. Their findings described widespread malnutrition.

The researchers did not treat that finding mainly as an emergency to be relieved. Mosby's later work describes how scientists working with the federal government came to see the people they were studying as research subjects. In the words he used in his journal article, they "came to view Aboriginal bodies as 'experimental materials.'"

That shift in view matters for everything that followed. The hunger the researchers documented was real, and the studies that came next used it as a condition to be measured rather than a problem to be solved.

The Manitoba survey and what it set in motion

The northern Manitoba survey was small by later standards. According to Ha-Shilth-Sa, it involved about 300 people. Its importance lay less in its size than in the habit it established: a team of scientists arriving in a community already short of food, measuring the effects of that shortage, and reporting the results to Ottawa.

Over the next years, the same approach moved from reserves into institutions. A residential school offered researchers what a scattered community could not: children whose meals were fully controlled by the institution, who could be weighed, examined and tested on a schedule, and who could not leave. The step from the Manitoba survey to the schools was a step toward more control over the people being studied, not less.

Nutrition experiments in six residential schools

In 1947, Lionel Bradley Pett, a biochemist working for the federal government, launched a program of studies in six residential schools, Ha-Shilth-Sa reported. The schools were in British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario and Nova Scotia, according to CBC News. The Alberni Indian Residential School, run near Port Alberni on the west side of Vancouver Island, was one of them.

The studies measured children's health over time against changes, or deliberate delays in changes, to what they were given. In a school where children were already short of food, that meant keeping them on rations the researchers knew to be inadequate while the measurements ran, as the Alberni milk study shows.

Frederick Tisdall, a leading Canadian nutrition expert and one of the developers of the infant cereal Pablum, is named in coverage of the research among the scientists involved. The Alberni principal of the time, A. E. Caldwell, is described by Ha-Shilth-Sa as a willing partner in the studies at that school.

What the nutrition experiments meant at Alberni

At Alberni, the starting point was a finding by inspectors that the children were deficient in vitamins A, B and C, and had the highest rate of riboflavin deficiency among the schools studied, Ha-Shilth-Sa reported. The experiment built on that deficiency rather than correcting it at once.

The daily milk ration was eight ounces. Researchers kept it there for two years to establish a baseline, with a plan to then triple it to 24 ounces and see whether the children's health and teeth improved. Whether the increase was ever carried out is uncertain; according to Ha-Shilth-Sa, it was supposed to begin in 1949. Many survivors told a 2013 forum they doubted they ever received more milk. The only milk they remembered was powdered, often lumpy and sour.

Dental care was also part of the design. Children at the schools were cut off from treatment by visiting Indian Health Services dentists, so that researchers could follow how vitamin deficiency affected their teeth. Cavities and gum disease, in other words, were left to develop because they were useful data.

If you have ever seen photographs of the Alberni school's dormitories or dining hall, it is worth knowing what those rooms meant to the children in them. Benson Nookemis, a former student, recalled daily porridge, constant hunger and a single slice of stale bread in the afternoon.

Teeth, dentists and the letters of 1952

The dental part of the studies left the most lasting marks. When survivor Dolly McRae described the dental work she had undergone at the school, Mosby told Ha-Shilth-Sa: "That's quite horrific, to just remove teeth rather than fill cavities." The account fits what the archival record describes: dentists kept away while deficiency did its work, and extraction rather than repair when treatment finally came.

The letters the children wrote in 1952 point to the other side of the same story. Mosby said they showed a longing for nutritious, culturally familiar foods, the kind of meals their families would have provided at home. Read next to the study files, the letters are a reminder that the "baseline diet" in the researchers' tables was a set of real meals eaten by real children, every day, for years.

No one asked the First Nations children in these studies, or their families, whether they agreed to take part. Tseshaht First Nation made the point directly in July 2013, at the site of the former school. Chief Councillor Hugh Braker said the experiments were carried out "without the consent of the parents."

Consent was not the only thing missing. The children were wards of a school system that controlled what they ate, whether they saw a dentist and when they could see their families. Researchers who wanted a population whose diet could be held constant for years found one in the schools, and the schools' own failure to feed children properly became the baseline of the experiment.

At a forum in Port Alberni in December 2013, Mosby put it this way: the researchers treated the malnourished children "as a research opportunity first, and not as a medical emergency."

How the residential school nutrition experiments came to light

The record had been in government files for decades. It became widely known through Mosby's article, "Administering Colonial Science: Nutrition Research and Human Biomedical Experimentation in Aboriginal Communities and Residential Schools, 1942–1952", published in Histoire sociale/Social History in 2013, volume 46, number 91.

The details were made public in mid-July 2013. Ha-Shilth-Sa reported Tseshaht's response on July 17, 2013, from the site of the former school. Within days, the story was national news.

The documents themselves were not new to everyone. According to APTN National News, the office of Aboriginal Affairs Minister Bernard Valcourt said most of about 900 documents related to the experiments had been handed to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2010, and the rest in 2011. A commission spokesperson confirmed that it held them.

The Red Cross question

Early coverage linked the Canadian Red Cross to the experiments, and Tseshaht asked the society for a full accounting of its role. Mosby later clarified the record. He told Ha-Shilth-Sa on July 20, 2013, that the Red Cross "did not take part" in the nutrition studies.

The confusion had a simple source. The Red Cross had been asked to survey nutrition in the schools from 1944 to 1946, and that survey "simply identified malnutrition and reported to the government," Mosby said. Both the Red Cross and the federal government used the name "Nutrition Services Division". "I regret not putting the word 'federal' before the words 'Nutrition Services Division,'" he said. The later field studies in the schools were carried out by federal researchers.

That correction does not change what happened to the children. It does change who carried it out, and it is one reason the published record, rather than early headlines, is the place to check details.

What the federal government and the commission said

The government's response in July 2013 came through the minister's office. A spokesperson for Valcourt, Andrea Richer, told APTN in an email that the experiments were "abhorrent examples of the dark pages of the residential schools' legacy." According to APTN, Valcourt also said that the 2008 apology by Prime Minister Stephen Harper covered the nutritional experiments.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was more cautious in public. Its spokesperson said Justice Murray Sinclair wanted the commission's researchers to examine the documents thoroughly before commenting. Speaking to CBC Radio later that month, Sinclair said commission staff had "seen the documents that relate to the experiments that were conducted in residential schools." He added that documents about experimentation in Aboriginal communities outside the schools had not been obtained, and that some medicines tested on Aboriginal children were later withheld from children in residential schools.

Other leaders were blunter. Assembly of First Nations Regional Chief Bill Erasmus told CBC that "the federal documents show that the government either doesn't know what's in its own records or that there may be an effort to actually suppress information."

A national response

The story did not stay in Port Alberni. In late July 2013, grassroots activists called for a national moment of silence to "reflect upon the impacts of Canada's residential schools", with gatherings planned in Ottawa, Thunder Bay, Sudbury, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Edmonton and Vancouver, APTN reported. The organisers also called on Ottawa to "honour its 2008 apology" and to release all the documents the Truth and Reconciliation Commission had requested.

By the end of the month, CBC reported, the revelations had prompted further calls from Aboriginal groups for the federal government to turn over all archival documents related to residential schools. A statement from Valcourt's director of communications, Jason MacDonald, said: "Our government recognizes that the relationship between Canada and First Nations has helped shape the country we know today."

What Tseshaht First Nation and survivors asked for

Tseshaht set out its demands within days of the story breaking: a public apology, full disclosure of the facts, compensation for the victims, and funding for further research into the effects on former students. It also asked the Red Cross to account for its involvement.

The position that the 2008 apology already covered the experiments drew a pointed reply. At the December 2013 forum, Braker said, "You can't apologize for something that the victims didn't even know was happening." Former student Charlie Thompson put it more simply: "You don't apologize for something if you're not going to make it right."

The forum at Maht Mahs, December 2013

On December 11, 2013, more than 200 people gathered at Maht Mahs gym in Port Alberni for a forum organised by Tseshaht First Nation and the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council, Ha-Shilth-Sa reported. Mosby spoke, and so did former students of the Alberni school.

Their accounts filled in what the archival documents could not. Survivors described rough dental examinations and, in many cases, teeth pulled without anaesthetic. They described hunger as a constant. Melvin Good asked the question that hung over the room: "Was that experiment to eliminate us?"

Mosby's answers were careful about what the documents could and could not show. He said the children were malnourished before the researchers arrived, because the school did not feed them enough, and that the documentation on some details, such as access to toothbrushes and toothpaste, was thin.

The apology, the settlement and what was not known

The disagreement over the 2008 apology was not a matter of wording. When the federal government apologised for the residential school system in 2008, the details of the nutrition studies were not public knowledge, and survivors had no way of knowing that their hunger and their dental treatment had been part of a research design. That is the heart of Braker's objection: an apology given before the victims knew what had happened to them cannot, in his view, already include it.

Tseshaht's demand for a compensation program that took the new revelations into account followed from the same reasoning. Survivors at the December forum framed it the same way: an acknowledgement is only meaningful if it is followed by a response to what has been acknowledged.

What the documents cannot tell

The archival record is detailed about what researchers planned and measured. It is thin in other places. Mosby said the documentation on matters such as toothbrushes and toothpaste was sparse, and that he had no evidence either way on whether students were denied them. The files do not record what the children felt, and they say little about what became of the children's health in later life.

That is why survivors' accounts matter alongside the documents rather than after them. Former students described what the files leave out: the taste of the milk, the pain of the dental chair, the constant hunger. Their testimony at Maht Mahs and elsewhere is part of the record now, and any full account of the experiments has to include it.

Where each part of the story is documented

Different sources answer different questions, and it helps to know which is which. For the design of the studies, the dates and the names of the researchers, the reference is Mosby's article in Histoire sociale/Social History; it is the work every news report of 2013 drew on. For the Alberni school and the people who attended it, the most detailed coverage is in Ha-Shilth-Sa, the Nuu-chah-nulth newspaper, which reported Tseshaht's response in July 2013, Mosby's correction about the Red Cross a few days later, and the December forum at Maht Mahs.

For the federal side, APTN National News reported the statements from Minister Valcourt's office and the transfer of about 900 documents to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and CBC News reported Justice Murray Sinclair's comments on what the commission had and had not seen. If you want to check a detail in this account, those are the places to start; the full list is at the end of this page.

One caution applies to all of it. Early reports in July 2013 contained errors, the Red Cross attribution being the best known, and some figures circulated in different versions. Where a detail matters, the later and more specific source is usually the better one.

Reading the record today

The residential school nutrition experiments are now part of the documented history of the school system, and of what was done to First Nations children in it, and of the Alberni school in particular. The core facts are not in dispute: the studies ran from 1942 to 1952, they took place at six residential schools including Alberni, the children were already malnourished, diets and dental care were manipulated for research purposes, and no one asked for consent. A 2023 study of Coast Salish woolly-dog weaving lists residential schooling, which removed children from their families, among the pressures behind that tradition's decline.

Some details are less settled. Reported numbers of people involved vary between sources, and CBC's figure of at least 1,300 children is not the same as figures given elsewhere. Whether the planned increase in the milk ration at Alberni ever took effect is uncertain. Those uncertainties are a reason to read Mosby's article and the primary sources, not a reason to doubt the account.

Survivors asked one more question at Maht Mahs that the record has not answered. If studies like these ran from 1942 to 1952, did anything continue afterward? "I don't know whether there were further experiments," Mosby said.

Questions

What were the residential school nutrition experiments?

Between 1942 and 1952, federal researchers ran nutrition studies on First Nations people, first in Cree communities in northern Manitoba and later at six residential schools. At the schools, children who were already malnourished were used as subjects, and some were kept on inadequate diets so that results could be compared.

Was a school on Vancouver Island involved?

Yes. The Alberni Indian Residential School near Port Alberni was one of the six schools in the program that began in 1947, according to Ha-Shilth-Sa, the newspaper of the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council.

What happened to the children at Alberni?

Researchers kept the daily milk ration at eight ounces for two years as a baseline before the plan to raise it to 24 ounces, and visiting dentists were stopped from treating the children so that the effects on their teeth could be followed. Survivors have described constant hunger and dental extractions without anaesthetic.

Who ran the experiments?

Coverage of the research names Lionel Bradley Pett, a biochemist working for the federal government, as the lead researcher at the schools, and Frederick Tisdall, the nutrition expert known as a co-inventor of the infant cereal Pablum, among the scientists involved in the earlier work.

Did the children or their parents consent?

No consent was sought from the children or their families. Tseshaht Chief Councillor Hugh Braker said in 2013 that the studies were done 'without the consent of the parents.'

How many people were involved?

CBC News reported in July 2013 that at least 1,300 Aboriginal children at residential schools in British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario and Nova Scotia were used as test subjects. Figures reported elsewhere differ, and Ian Mosby's journal article remains the reference for the details.

How did the experiments become public?

Historian Ian Mosby of the University of Guelph published his research in the journal Histoire sociale/Social History in 2013 under the title 'Administering Colonial Science'. News coverage in July 2013 brought it to wide public attention.

Was the Red Cross part of the experiments?

Mosby told Ha-Shilth-Sa in July 2013 that he had seen no evidence of Red Cross involvement in the experiments. The Red Cross carried out a nutritional survey of the schools from 1944 to 1946 that identified malnutrition, and confusion arose because both the federal government and the Red Cross used the name Nutrition Services Division.

What did the federal government say in 2013?

A spokesperson for Aboriginal Affairs Minister Bernard Valcourt described the experiments to APTN as 'abhorrent examples of the dark pages of the residential schools' legacy'. The minister's office said most of about 900 related documents had been given to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2010 and the rest in 2011.

Did the Truth and Reconciliation Commission know about the documents?

Yes. A commission spokesperson confirmed to APTN that it held the documents, and Justice Murray Sinclair told CBC that commission staff had seen documents relating to the experiments in residential schools.

What did Tseshaht First Nation ask for?

Tseshaht called for a public apology, full disclosure of the facts, compensation for those affected and funding for further research, and asked the Red Cross for a full accounting of its role.

Did the 2008 federal apology cover the experiments?

According to APTN, the minister said the 2008 apology by Prime Minister Stephen Harper covered the nutritional experiments. Survivors and Tseshaht leaders disagreed, saying an apology cannot cover harm the victims did not know about.

What did survivors say at the December 2013 forum in Port Alberni?

More than 200 people attended a forum at Maht Mahs gym on December 11, 2013. Survivors described hunger, sour powdered milk and painful dental treatment, and several asked whether the experiments had continued after 1952.

Did the experiments continue after 1952?

That question remains open in the public record. Asked at the 2013 forum, Mosby said, 'I don't know whether there were further experiments.'

Where can I read the original research?

The article is Ian Mosby, 'Administering Colonial Science: Nutrition Research and Human Biomedical Experimentation in Aboriginal Communities and Residential Schools, 1942–1952', Histoire sociale/Social History, volume 46, number 91, pages 145 to 172.

Where can former students find support?

The Indian Residential School Crisis Line, 1-866-925-4419, offers 24-hour crisis support to former Indian Residential School students and their families, according to Indigenous Services Canada.

Sources

  1. Administering Colonial Science: Nutrition Research and Human Biomedical Experimentation in Aboriginal Communities and Residential Schools, 1942–1952, Ian Mosby, Histoire sociale/Social History 46 (91), 145–172, 2013
  2. Canada must apologize for nutritional experiments at residential school: Tseshaht, Ha-Shilth-Sa, 2013-07-17
  3. Red Cross wasn't part of hunger experiments, says researcher, Ha-Shilth-Sa, 2013-07-20
  4. AIRS survivors demand Ottawa come clean on all medical experiments, Ha-Shilth-Sa, 2013-12-13
  5. Residential school commission received nutritional experiment documents in 2010, APTN National News, 2013-07-23
  6. Aboriginal children used in medical tests, commissioner says, CBC News, 2013-07-31
  7. Indian Residential School Crisis Line, Indigenous Services Canada