The TRC report is a vital resource that weaves together survivors' testimony and historical records into a full account of how the Canadian government and religious institutions carried out cultural genocide against First Nations, Métis, and Inuit people.
Currently the volumes are available in print and as e-books and PDFs. However, the full text has not yet been put online in a lightweight format that can be easily searched, navigated, and viewed on any device. The report is explicitly public domain, which means that the creators have waived copyright. Anyone can share it and put it in any format, for free.
This is just the Executive Summary; the full report consists of several volumes. I am documenting my steps as I go in case anyone else wants to continue the work.
All of the tools I am using are free for anyone to use, and they (or reasonable equivalents) are included with free operating systems. Personally, I have used elementary OS and am currently using KDE Neon, which are based on the popular OS Ubuntu.
- Regexr
- markdown-toc, to generate tables of contents
- PDF viewers: evince, Okular
- Text editors: Code, Kate
I could probably crowdfund buying the e-books and extract the text much easier that way, but I am stubborn and like a challenge.
At the moment the project is hosted on GitHub, though I'm considering GitBook/GitHub Pages/a small static stand-alone site.
Suggestions, corrections, and feedback are welcome. Feel free to contact me or create an issue, fork, pull request, etc.