Shingwauk Hall was erected in 1935 to house a residential training school established in 1873 by the Reverend Edward F. Wilson. Under this Anglican missionary's tutelage the institution, named after the well-known Ojibway Chief Augustin Shingwauk (Little Pine), provided Indian children with religious instruction, occupational training and homemaking skills. The first frame structure, located at the nearby Garden River Reserve, was destroyed by fire within six days of its completion, and the foundation stone for a new three-storey stone building was laid here in 1874 by the Earl of Dufferin, the Governor-General of Canada. Other buildings were added, but of these the Bishop Fauquier Chapel, completed in 1883, is the sole remaining structure.