1996, sponsorship of St. Joseph Hospital in Nashua was transferred from the Grey Nuns to Covenant Health Systems. Participation in the residential school system The Sisters worked as nurses and teachers in a number of Indian Residential Schools, as the preferred missionary partners of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, who were not allowed to teach girls. The Oblates paid parents to allow their children to attend boarding schools. At the schools, they participated in the effort to remove children from their traditional Indigenous ways of life, in order to "civilize" them. The main goal of the Oblates and the Grey Nuns was to provide a Catholic education (in competition with schools operated by Anglicans) and to give limited secular education. These early mission boarding schools never recruited more than a small percentage of the number of school-aged children in the region. Though often at odds, the Canadian government and the various religious organizations operating residential schools agreed that Indigenous cultural practices had to be suppressed. Students at the schools were subjected to physical and Sexual abuse; insufficient food; and being forbidden to speak their native languages or engage in their cultural practices. This treatment has been deemed cultural genocide by the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The Sisters worked at one of the most notorious schools, St. Anne's Indian Residential School (located in Fort Albany, Ontario), where a homemade electric chair was reportedly used on the children for the amusement of the staff, among other severe abuses. Survivor testimony later sparked a long-running OPP investigation; two nuns were eventually convicted of assault for their actions at St Anne's. The Sisters also worked at the Holy Angels Residential School in Fort Chipewyan. The Mikisew Cree First Nation, Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation and Fort Chipewyan Métis Community have hired archaeologists from the University of Alberta to search the grounds of the school for unmarked graves reported by former students. The search began in March 2022. Other residential schools where the sisters worked include Île-à-la-Crosse Residential School, Lac la Biche (Notre Dame des Victoires) Residential School, St. Albert (Youville) Residential School, Qu'Appelle Indian Residential School, St. Boniface Residential School, Assiniboia Indian Residential School, Shubenacadie Indian Residential School, Fort Providence Residential School, Blue Quills Residential School, the residence at Fort Smith, Fort Resolution Indian Residential School, and Chesterfield Inlet (Turquetil Hall) Residential School. The Sisters and the Oblates objected to