The unique nature of the work required a multidisciplinary consortium. Bronson assembled and led a team of specialists, historical researchers, archival digitization experts, database engineers, metadata indexers, and program managers, and deployed them as integrated, parallel teams at archive sites across Canada. Each team carried the same protocols, the same image standards, and the same chain of custody, ensuring that work conducted simultaneously in Halifax, Montreal, Yellowknife, and Vancouver flowed into one coherent national database.

Core Capabilities Delivered

01 — Document Identification & Appraisal

Senior researchers worked with local archivists to identify potentially relevant bodies of records, applying historical knowledge and finding tools to ensure no significant material was missed.

02 — On-Site Digital Capture

Mobile teams digitized records on the premises of custodial archives, applying rigorous image protocols while preserving the integrity and original order of every artifact.

03 — Data Conversion at Scale

Existing digital holdings — including legacy litigation production databases with millions of records — were converted, OCR’d, and ingested under a unified standard.

04 — Metadata & Keyword Indexing

A custom indexing thesaurus and metadata schema were developed in close consultation with the client, enabling parties to the settlement, claimants, and researchers to search the archive in plain language.

05 — Secure Database Provision

A dedicated, logically and physically isolated database hosted in a Tier 1 Canadian data centre, built to the highest security standards with full audit trails and 24/7/365 availability.

06 — Search, Analytics & Reporting

Trained personnel supported the parties with ad-hoc research requests, complex searches, and reporting drawn directly from the database to support ongoing settlement activities.

07 — Program & Quality Management

End-to-end program management, quarterly reporting to the client, and a formal change-control process governed a portfolio that spanned five years and multiple jurisdictions.

How the Work Moved

The collection journey for any given archive, from first conversation with a local archivist to a fully indexed, searchable record in the central database, followed a carefully designed sequence. The same disciplined process scaled from small archives of a few thousand pages to the largest holdings of more than half a million pages.

Phase 01 — Engage and Plan

The records lead contacted each archive, scoped the holdings, and developed a research plan signed off by both the archivist and the client.

Phase 02 — Review and Identify

On-site researchers reviewed files against the settlement’s relevance criteria, recording decisions and flagging items for digitization.

Phase 03 — Digitize

Specialized teams deployed scanning, audio, and video reproduction equipment to capture records without ever removing them from custodial care, except under exceptional circumstances.

Phase 04 — Process and Index

Post-processing created PDF derivatives, OCR’d the text, and indexers applied the project’s custom metadata thesaurus to every record.

Phase 05 — Secure Upload

Records were ingested into the central database hosted in a Canadian data centre, with archival master files couriered to the client on encrypted drives under strict chain-of-custody procedures.

Phase 06 — Return and Verify

A copy of derivative files was returned to each visited archive as a gesture of partnership, and Bronson’s quality assurance team verified each task against its statement of work before sign-off.

The Infrastructure Behind the Database

Solving the technology problem meant designing for a scale of secure storage and access that exceeded any comparable Canadian deployment at the time. Bronson and its partners built a purpose-engineered environment, hosted entirely in Canada, that grew in step with the volume of records flowing in from archives across the country.

Infrastructure at a Glance

• 50 TB — Tier-3 SAN storage scaled in five-terabyte increments over the project lifecycle
• 98.7% — Designed uptime, 24/7/365 worldwide secure access, all data resident in Canada
• Top-tier security — Cleared facility, personnel, and every step of data handling

Every component of the solution was held to the highest security standards. The Calgary data centre was a Tier 1 facility with quadruple power redundancy. All databases were physically and logically separated from any other client environment. All data was processed and routed exclusively within Canada. Every person on the project, from senior researchers to scanning technicians, held the appropriate security clearance. Audit trails captured every interaction with every record, supporting the evidentiary integrity the settlement required.

The Impact

Over the five-year engagement, the Bronson-led consortium delivered what is now understood to be the largest single digital repository ever assembled in Canadian history. More than 10.6 million pages were reviewed, nearly 4 million records were digitized, and the resulting database holds approximately 5 million searchable documents drawn from institutional archives and a host of related custodians.

The collection has supported the parties to the settlement throughout its lifecycle and now stands as a permanent, searchable record, accessible to claimants, families and communities reconstructing their histories, educators developing curricula, researchers tracing the institutional record, and members of the public engaging with a story foundational to understanding the country.

What This Engagement Demanded

This was not a document review in the ordinary sense. It was a multi-year national program with a politically and legally complex backdrop, a constellation of custodians with their own institutional priorities, technically demanding records in obsolete formats, security standards that could not be relaxed, and a moral and evidentiary weight that informed every decision. Bronson’s role was to broker solutions across many stakeholders, manage risk in real time, and hold the program together through five years of execution, all while ensuring that the final product served as a permanent, defensible, searchable record of the matter.

The capabilities Bronson brought to bear on this engagement, program management at national scale, secure data infrastructure, multidisciplinary consortium leadership, large-scale document gathering and analytics, and disciplined delivery against extraordinary complexity, remain the foundation of how we work today.