The Zulu man who spent 3 years at a residential school in Canada

In the student register of the Shingwauk residential school in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., from 1892, one word breaks the sequence of "Ojibway," "Delaware" and "Iroquois" listed beneath the heading for tribal affiliation: "Zulu."

John Nzipo travelled from South Africa to London where he ended up destitute on the streets. He was sent to northern Ontario by Barnardo Homes, a London-based charity that sent many poor street children from England to Canada to work as labourers.

Researcher Edward Sadowski first came across Nzipo's name in residential school records in the early 1990s. He was working with the Shingwauk Project, a cross-cultural research initiative headed by the Children of Shingwauk Alumni Association and Algoma University that sought to collect and preserve the history of residential schools.

Read More: CBC News