In 1776 the Collège de St. Raphael was formerly inaugurated for the purpose of higher education, but it continued its elementary classes or petites écoles.
On October 11, 1790, in answer to a request of Lord Dorchester of the sixth of the same month, a catalogue of the professors of the College of Montreal for 1790 was sent with some remarks on the college and on the schools. The latter are as follows: “The schools which the ecclesiastics of the Seminary of Montreal keep are nearly as old as the establishment of the town. They teach only reading and writing in Latin and in French. The Seminary undertakes all the expense, furnishes the wood and the books, pays the masters’ board and lodges them. These schools are divided into ‘grandes’ and ‘petites.’ The petites écoles are for children who are only beginning to learn to read. The grandes écoles are for those who commence already to know how to read and who are learning to write. The parents who are able, pay five shillings a year for each scholar. The poor pay nothing at all.”
The first English schoolmaster in Montreal would seem to be a John Pullman, who came from New York in 1773 by the recommendation of the Rev. Dr. Ogilvie to try to establish a school in Montreal in consequence of an application to him from gentlemen of that city. He worked under a committee. This above information is told in the memorial of 1779, in which he applied for a license of Protestant schoolmaster similar to the position that Tanswell then possessed in Quebec. His recommendation was signed by the leading men of Montreal. But his scholars dwindling through competition, doubtless, his poverty forced him to apply, in 1782, for any small employment as a clerk and for a subscription to a work he had prepared, the short title of which was “Cash Clerks’ Assistant.” Finlay Fisher opened a school about 1778 which he said was well attended and flourishing. The Rev. Mr. John Stuart opened an academy for youth in Montreal in 1781. Mr. Stuart was born in the province of Virginia in 1736 or 1740, was ordained in England, returning in 1770 to Philadelphia, whence he went as a missionary to the Mohawk valley. On the outbreak of the American revolution he had been made a prisoner for his loyalty. He seems to have escaped and made his way to Montreal. He prepared his advertisement and sent it to Governor Haldimand, who offered to give him every encouragement and appropriated to the undertaking part of the bounty allowed by government, adding “Your advertisement will be published tomorrow, but I directed the words ‘principally intended for the children of Protestants’ to be left out as it is a distinction which could not fail to create jealousies at all times improper but more particularly so at present.” His Excellency desired that all classes should be received. Mr. Stuart in complying said that he had already admitted any persons that offered, Protestants, Catholics, Jews, etc.
It was difficult to get schoolmasters in the early days. Mr. Stuart’s assistant was a Mr. Christie. He was incapable of teaching even the lowest branches of arithmetic and language. Mr. Stuart on November 27, 1782, reported in all simplicity to Haldimand: “I could have dispensed with his ignorance of the English language and faulty accent, but when I found him unacquainted with the rules of common arithmetic and often obliged to apply to me (in presence of the pupils) for the solution of the most simple question, I could no longer doubt of his inefficiency.” A new assistant was engaged and shortly afterward Christie left the province. Finlay Fisher in 1783 in his memorial applied for Christie’s salary, £25 a year, to be added to his own; he did not receive it, however, till May 1, 1786, when it came due for the first time for the preceding six months. Mr. Stuart’s last salary at Montreal was for the six months between November 1, 1785, to April 30, 1786. He then went to Kingston on which his gaze had been fixed for some time. He became the first Anglican clergyman there. In 1789 he established a classical school there, the first school of the kind in Upper Canada.
An early report issued in England before 1790 by the “Society for the Propagation,” speaking of the early struggles, mentions that “there is not a single Protestant church in the whole province. * * * There are two schools, to each of which a salary of £100 a year is allotted by the government, the one at Quebec and the other at Montreal. The schoolmaster’s name at Quebec is Tanswell. The Rev. Mr. Stuart had the school at Montreal for a short time (after his flight from Fort Hunter, where he was a missionary) until, about two years ago, the government thought proper to take half his salary away and divide it between a Mr. Fisher and Mr. Christie, both Presbyterians. * * * But besides the division of the salary there is neither a schoolhouse nor land appropriated nor trustees appointed, nor any regularities made respecting the application of the £100 salary. The inhabitants are opulent and generous and only want a proper person to place and establish a seminary. In that case the income cannot fail of being considerable. The prices for tuition have been for Latin, half a guinea, for English and arithmetic, $2 per month. There is not an English school in the place.”
STUDIES FROM THE CARTIER MONUMENT: Law
STUDIES FROM THE CARTIER MONUMENT: Education
In 1790, however, a memorandum was made of the ecclesiastical and educational aspects of the country which gives us an insight into the growing life of the English colony in Canada and Montreal, occasioned, no doubt, by the influx of the United Empire Loyalists migrating into the country: