“This may be said to have been the first ambitious attempt to put Protestant education in Montreal on a substantial and efficient footing. Mr. Skakel came out under, as he was wont to say, the pleasing illusion that the new world would offer him prospects denied him in the old. He was disillusionized, for the colony was not only young and raw, but the political and social conditions of the time were anything but congenial, while the emoluments were slender, and the life, generally, wholly different to that to which he had been accustomed. However, Mr. Skakel—whose portrait hangs in the High School—did not complain, but went straight on, developing the school which met, first of all, in the old Belmont Park building, and afterwards in the Fraser building at the corner of Dorchester Street and Union Avenue.”
Mr. Skakel was succeeded by the Rev. John Leeds and the Rev. George Simpson. The Royal grammar school was merged with the high school shortly after the organization of the latter in 1845. The Lancaster School took its name from Messrs. Lancaster and Bell, who came out from England, having been instrumental in establishing popular schools there, and they interested themselves in the formation of the British Canadian school. The early days of education were those of sacrifice for the teachers, ill paid, with inadequate teaching facilities, both in materials and buildings, overwork, and for the treasury which had to depend on voluntary gifts and collecting cards. Things are better now, but one wonders whether the teaching profession will ever come to its own.
The National School was founded in 1816 under the auspices of the Montreal district committee of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. In 1839 the number of boys was 36 French and 120 English, and of girls 20 French and 84 English.
The British and Canadian School Society, which was opened in a building belonging formerly to the Montreal Hospital, was instituted on the 21st of September, 1822, to maintain on an extensive scale a school to promote the education of the labouring classes, and secondly, as a model school to train up teachers under Mr. Lancaster and a committee of gentlemen for future schools to follow the British system. It was meant to be undenominational. Its early success enabled it to build by funds from voluntary sources and from the provincial government a more commodious schoolhouse on Lagauchetière Street, the foundation being laid on the 17th of October, 1826. It was designed to school 414 boys and 232 girls. In 1826 the number of attendance was:
| Boys | Girls | |
| Roman Catholics | 97 | 38 |
| Episcopal Church | 27 | 9 |
| Presbyterian | 42 | 21 |
| Methodists | 30 | 11 |
| —— | —— | |
| 196 | 79 | |
| Total, 275. |
This school lapsed in 1837, the year of the rebellion, which proved so fatal to education. There were 1,600 schools in the province, teaching 40,000 children, and these had to be closed. The Brothers of the Christian Schools made their entry into Montreal in 1837. Their important work, of which humble seeds were now laid, developed greatly under the Union, its story being therefore left to a later chapter.
A summary of the schools of 1839 is presented by Bosworth in “Hochelaga Depicta.” Besides the “New College” or “pétit seminaire,” there were “several respectable academies in the city, as the Royal Grammar School in Little St. James Street, conducted by A. Skakel, Esq.; the Rev. Dr. Black’s, adjoining St. Paul Church; Rev. J. Ramsay’s, Main Street, St. Lawrence suburbs; Messrs. Howden & Taggart’s, Craig Street; Mr. Workman’s, in Hospital Street; and Mr. Bruce’s, in McGill Street. There are also young ladies’ schools of high reputation, as Miss Easton’s, in Bonaventure Street; Miss Felton’s, in St. Gabriel Street; and Mrs. Fitzgerald’s, in Notre Dame Street. The total number of schools it would be impossible to assign. A few years since two gentlemen of the city made personal inquiry throughout the place with a view to determining the point. They found fifty-nine of different classes, but it is probable not only that some were overlooked, but that the number is greater now than it was then. There was also much private tuition in the families of the more wealthy inhabitants.”
The writer probably includes in the fifty-nine or more among the unnamed schools those of the Catholics, which were under the auspices of the Sulpicians, the teaching orders of the Congregational Nuns and the Brothers of the Christian Schools, and those conducted by lay people. A review of the schools for Catholics up to the Union may be now presented.
The early movement under the Sulpicians up to 1790 has already been stated. About 1796, as the city was beginning to expand, M. Roux, the superior of the seminary, opened a new school for children in the St. Lawrence district under the control of a layman. Later he established other schools at Bonsecours, St. Lawrence, St. Antoine, St. Mary (or the Faubourg de Quebec), and St. Joseph, all these schools with the exception of the seminary receiving children of both sexes. M. Quiblier, succeeding M. Roux, determined to erect separate schools or boys and girls, the latter to be under the direction of the Congregation Nuns. These, therefore, opened successively a great number of classes, three at the Faubourg, St. Lawrence; six at that of Quebec (St. Mary’s), two of which were for the Irish; three classes at St. Antoine, and three at St. Joseph, and two classes at the Recollects for the Irish.
The Seminary provided the schools, their furniture and upkeep, and undertook to convey the nuns to and fro morning and evening. About fifteen hundred children were instructed and educated gratuitously in these schools. In addition the Congregation maintained in its own motherhouse, the pensionat, composed of six classes; the “great school,” with its three classes; and the “small school,” with two.[2] What he had done for the education of the girls M. Quiblier would do for the boys, and it is due to him that he succeeded in bringing the Brothers of the Christian Schools to Montreal in 1837. A tribute paid by the Hon. Jacques Viger to M. Quiblier and the Sulpicians may be quoted from a Précis Historique which he composed. “Sur les petites écoles de la paroisse de Montréal pour les garçons.” “Should the time come,” he says, “when the Gentlemen of the Seminary might have no other right to public recognition than that of having constantly exercised their generous zeal for education undying blessings should be their desert; and if M. Quiblier had no other title of glory beyond that of having surpassed his predecessors in that respect that title would be fine enough. * * * Such are, among the other good works of the house of St. Sulpice, those which it has never ceased to lavish on the progress of education in a town of which it can, with good cause, be called the foundress and the mother.”