In 1889 the Roman Catholic day school on the Peigan Reserve in present-day Alberta accepted three boarding students. Nine years later a new boarding school, known as the Sacred Heart or Peigan school, was built on the reserve. A 1909 study of health conditions in residential schools in the west found that 65 of the students who had attended the school since 1892 had died. Overcrowding and the lack of a steady water supply led to a number of closures in the 1950s. In 1961 the school was closed and a new day school took its place.
