Known locally as the “Mush Hole,” the Mohawk Institute in Brantford, Ont. was Canada’s oldest and longest-running residential school. But on September 30, 2025, it officially became an interpretive historic site. On that solemn day, what was once a place of suffering, erasure and intergenerational trauma was reborn as a museum, teaching site—and a space for truth-telling, remembrance and hope.
The transformation was decades in the making, built on persistent activism, deep community engagement, archival research, restoration efforts and, above all, the resolve of survivors and Indigenous leadership that this history not be buried.
Behind the Bricks: A New Chapter
At the London Museum on September 25, Mary Simpson attended the launch of Behind the Bricks: The Life and Times of the Mohawk Institute. Edited by Richard W. “Rick” Hill Sr., Alison Norman, Thomas Peace and Jennifer Pettit, Behind the Bricks draws together Indigenous and settler historians, community voices, archival researchers, archaeologists and survivors to reconstruct the layered history behind the walls of the institute. Another launch event was held by the Ontario Historical Society a couple nights later.
The book begins by tracing the school’s founding and historical context, before delving into the its architecture and physical spaces, the curriculum and daily regimes imposed on children, religious and governmental oversight, student resistance, and the long process of commemoration and preservation. To close, Behind the Bricks allows survivor voices to speak directly, offering their unique perspectives of lived experience.
The editors have emphasized that the Mohawk Institute was not an isolated institution—it was in many ways a model or prototype for national residential school policy. The takeaway: What can this case teach us about the wider system of Indigenous schooling and control in Canada? How did notions of “civilization,” assimilation and authority operate in this place? How do we reckon with the spaces—the bricks, corridors and dormitories—that bore witness to so much pain? Behind the Bricks does not offer easy answers, but rather invites readers into the difficult task of listening, digging and reflecting.
