[4]: 241  It was to be staffed by the Roman Catholic Order Sisters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul.

However, just before it opened, Duncan Campbell Scott of Canada's Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, expanded its mandate to be an option to the small day schools which already existed on reserves.

The school opened for staff and administrators in May 1929 and in its expanded role was intended to educate 150 students.

[6] Mi'kmaw and Wolastoqiyik children from Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, and Quebec attended Shubenacadie Indian Residential School.

[14] Scott Hamilton, an anthropologist at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ont.said that ..."at times residential schools dealt with many sick children at once; had limited medical and diagnostic capacity; were overcrowded with kids who were society’s most vulnerable – not unlike the tragic numbers of deaths in nursing homes due to COVID-19.

"[6] Those who were placed in the institution during the first twenty years agree that there were serious problems with the institution: poor living conditions, corporal punishment, over-crowding, lack of academic education, forced farm labour, hunger, racist curriculum, and children punished for speaking the Mi’kmaq language.

One survivor of the institution, William Henry, reported that "Within those [first] few days, you had to learn, because otherwise you’re gonna get your head knocked off.

[18] Numerous Mi’kmaq who attended the school reported the staff using corporal punishment during the first two decades of the institutions’ existence.

[19] One Mi’kmaq person alleged that his sister died within 24 hours of being assaulted by staff.

[23] Survivor William Hearney reported he was strapped and had his mouth washed out with soap for speaking his Mi'kmaw language.

[23] In 1946, Indian Affairs regulated that same amount of time needed to be spent on labour as in public school.

One chief protested in the Truro Daily News in 1931 that in the institution “everything Indian is to be forever obliterated and cast into a bottomless pit.” [30] With the arrival of the fourth principal in 1956, staff no longer punished students for speaking Mi'kmaq language.

She said, “We certainly didn't have any training for dealing with children who were taken from their homes, and who really needed love.” According to Salmons, teachers were forbidden from expressing kindness or support.

“It was written down: we were not to show affection for the children.”[31] Against the orders of the Catholic Church, the Institution took children against their parents’ wishes.

[1]: 120  One boy, Steven Labobe, ran back to his home on Prince Edward Island, and the principal decided to not demand his return.

Genine Paul-Dimitracopoulos told the Commission that learning what the Shubenacadie school was like, helped her understand "how we grew up because my mom never really showed us love when we were kids coming up.

[38] After the school was closed, provincial child protection and welfare services stepped in and many children were put into foster homes.

[39] The Oblates apologized in 1991 for their role in attempting to assimilate Indigenous people, and the physical and sexual abuse that occurred at residential schools.

The Sisters of Charity of Halifax, which staffed the residential school in Shubenacadie, apologized at a TRC hearing in 2011.Archbishop Austen-Emile Burke gave an apology in 1992 in Indian Brook and at Millbrook in 1993 for the damage caused by the residential school in Shubenacadie.

[40] Eventually 1.9 million dollar lawsuit was settled at the national level, the largest historical redress agreement in the world.

[41] In 2012 a monument to the suffering and injustice created by the school was installed at the education and drug rehabilitation centre on the We’koqma’q First Nation in Whycocomagh, Nova Scotia.

Mi’kmaq Grand Chief Ben Sylliboy who went to the school when he was six in 1947 and helped at the unveiling said the monument was needed to remind people not to let such a tragedy happen again.