Part 2 (2/2)
The same session of the Legislature set apart 150 as an annual grant for purchasing books and tracts designed to afford moral and religious instruction.
By the creation of a General Board of Education, Rev. Dr. Strachan became very prominently identified with education in Upper Canada. No man was better qualified through zeal, practical knowledge, and a genuine interest in higher education. He had been made an honorary member of the Executive Council in 1815, and an active member in 1817.
In 1820 he was appointed a member of the Legislative Council. Being a prominent Churchman, an experienced and successful teacher, and residing at York, he was naturally consulted by successive Governors on educational matters. Strachan was an uncompromising Churchman with ritualistic tendencies, and in politics a Tory of the George III.
school. He had neither faith in, nor sympathy for, a democracy. He accepted things as he found them, and wished to preserve them so. He could conceive of no more perfect state of society for the new world than that which he left behind him in the old. He firmly believed in education of the most n.o.ble kind for gentlemen, but it is doubtful if he recognized the right of every man to the highest possible cultivation of his intellectual powers. He would have looked upon such a plan as subversive of the existing orders of society. At any rate he never evinced any pa.s.sion for popular education except that moral and religious education given under the aegis of an Established Church. On the other hand, no man in Canada had a more sincere desire to foster higher inst.i.tutions of learning, and it had from the very first been Strachan's plan that the District Grammar Schools should be feeders for a Provincial University, and now, in 1824, when he became virtually head of educational affairs in Upper Canada, he determined to carry his scheme to a successful issue.
There were serious difficulties. An endowment had been provided for a university by the Crown grant in 1797, but it was at this time almost worthless. It consisted of blocks of land, containing several towns.h.i.+ps, in remote parts of the Province. The lands were good, but so long as the Government had free lands to give incoming settlers, the school lands were not in demand. Besides these school or university lands, there were other lands in possession of the Crown. The original surveyor reserved two-sevenths of all land. One-seventh was the reserve for a ”Protestant Clergy,” which eventually caused so much strife and ill-feeling. The other seventh was known as the Crown Reserve. In many cases this Crown Reserve was becoming valuable, even in 1824, because of the labour of settlers who owned adjoining farms. Much of the Crown Reserve was under lease and giving a more or less certain revenue. Strachan conceived a bold and successful plan. He suggested to Sir Peregrine Maitland that for grants to new settlers the school lands were worth as much to the Government as the Crown Reserves. Why not exchange school lands for an equal area of Crown Reserve land? The matter was put before the Home Government, and in 1827 a favourable reply was given. The result was that the University got 225,944 acres of land, distributed throughout every District in Upper Canada, but having more than one-half its total area in the Home, Gore, and London Districts, the wealthiest and most populous parts of Upper Canada. The Commissioners, appointed in 1848 by Lord Elgin to enquire into the affairs of King's College, state (pages 16 and 17): ”The Crown Reserves thus converted into the University Endowment, consisted of lands in various parts of Upper Canada in actual or nominal occupation under lease, at rate of rental fixed by a certain scale established by the Provincial Government, and a large proportion of the lots were in an improved or cultivated state.”
In March, 1826, Rev. Dr. Strachan submitted to the Lieutenant-Governor a very able and comprehensive report[22] showing why a university ought at once to be established. The report gives an interesting and authentic summary of the state of education in Upper Canada at that time. ”The present state of Education in this Province consists of Common Schools throughout the Towns.h.i.+ps, established under several Acts of the Provincial Legislature, and which are now, by the exertions of Your Excellency, placed on an excellent footing, requiring no other improvements than the means of multiplying their number, which, no doubt, will be granted as the finances of the Province become more productive. In about three hundred and forty Common Schools established in the different Districts of the Colony, from seven to eight thousand children are taught reading and writing, the elements of arithmetic, and the first principles of religion; and when it is considered that the parents commonly send their children in rotation--the younger in summer when the roads are good, and the older in winter--it is not too much to say that nearly double this number, or from twelve to fourteen thousand children, profit annually by the Common Schools. The consequence is that the people, scattered as they are over a vast wilderness, are becoming alive to the great advantage of educating their children, and are, in many places, seconding, with laudable zeal, the exertions of the Legislature, and establis.h.i.+ng schools at their own expense.
[22] See copy in D. H. E., Vol. I., pp. 211-213.
”Provision is made by law for the translation of some of the more promising scholars from the Common to the District Schools, where the cla.s.sics and practical mathematics are taught. In these schools, eleven in number, there are at present upwards of 300 youth acquiring an education to qualify them for the different professions; and, although they can seldom support more than one master, several of the young gentlemen who have been brought up in them are now eminent in their professions, and would, by their talents and high principles, do credit to seminaries of greater name. But the period has arrived when the District Schools [Grammar Schools] will become still more useful by confining themselves to the intention of their first establishment, namely, nurseries for a University--an inst.i.tution now called for by the increased population and circ.u.mstances of the Colony, and most earnestly desired by the more respectable inhabitants.
”There is not in either Province any English Seminary above the rank of a good school, at which a liberal education can be obtained. Thus the youth of nearly 300,000 Englishmen have no opportunity of receiving instruction within the Canadas in Law, Medicine, or Divinity. The consequence is that many young men coming forward to the learned professions are obliged to look beyond the Province for the last two years of their education--undoubtedly the most important and critical of their lives. Very few are able on account of the great expense to go to England or Scotland; and the distance is so great and the difficulties so many that parental anxiety reluctantly trusts children from its observation and control. The youths are, therefore, in some degree, compelled to look forward to the United States, where the means of education, though of a description far inferior to those of Great Britain, are yet superior to those within the Province, and a growing necessity is arising of sending them to finish their education in that country. Now, in the United States, a system prevails unknown to, or unpractised by, any other nation. In all other countries morals and religion are made the basis of future instruction, and the first book put into the hands of children teaches them the domestic, social, and religious virtues; but in the United States politics pervade the whole system of instruction. The school books from the very first elements are stuffed with praises of their own inst.i.tutions and breathe hatred to everything English. To such a country our youth may go, strongly attached to their native land and all its establishments, but by hearing them continually depreciated and those of America praised, these attachments will, in many, be gradually weakened, and some may become fascinated with that liberty which has degenerated into licentiousness and imbibe, perhaps unconsciously, sentiments unfriendly to things of which Englishmen are proud....
”The establishment of a University at the seat of Government will complete a regular system of education in Upper Canada from the letters of the alphabet to the most profound investigations of science.... In regard to the profession of medicine it is melancholy to think that more than three-fourths of the present pract.i.tioners have been educated or attended lectures in the United States.... There are, as yet, only twenty-two clergymen in Upper Canada, the greater number from England.
It is essential that young men coming forward to the Church should be educated entirely within the Province, but for this there is no provision.... But the wants of the Province are becoming great, and however much disposed the elder clergy may be to bring forward young men to the sacred profession, they have neither time nor means of doing it with sufficient effect. There can be nothing of that zeal, of that union and mutual attachment, of that deep theological and literary enquiry and anxiety to excel, which would be found among men collected at the University, and here it is not irrelevant to observe that it is of the greatest importance that the education of the Colony should be conducted by the clergy.
”Nothing can be more manifest than that this Colony has not yet felt the advantage of a religious establishment. What can twenty-two clergymen do, scattered over a country of nearly six hundred miles in length? Can we be surprised that, under such circ.u.mstances, the religious benefits of the ecclesiastical establishment are unknown, and sectaries of all descriptions have increased on every side? And when it is further considered that the religious teachers of all other Protestant denominations, a very few respectable ministers of the Church of Scotland excepted, come almost universally from the Republican States of America, where they gather their knowledge and form their sentiments, it is evident that if the Imperial Government does not step forward with efficient help, the ma.s.s of the population will be nurtured and instructed in hostility to all our inst.i.tutions, both civil and religious.... From all which it appears highly expedient to establish a university at the seat of Government, to complete the system of education in the Colony at which all the branches requisite for qualifying young men for the learned professions may be taught.... The princ.i.p.al and professors, except those of Medicine and Law, should be clergymen of the Established Church; and no tutor, teacher, or officer who is not a member of that Church should ever be employed in the inst.i.tution.”
I have given this long quotation from Rev. Dr. Strachan's report for several reasons. It shows very clearly the point of view of a remarkable man who had much to do with educational affairs in Upper Canada for a period of nearly seventy years. It shows his zeal for higher education, his belief in the efficacy of a religious establishment, his narrow bigotry and intolerance of all outside of an establishment, his old-world belief that the clergy should control education, his loyal attachment to British inst.i.tutions, and above all, to those who read between the lines, his lack of real interest in elementary education. He is perfectly satisfied with the state of the Common Schools, although they were then accommodating less than one in twenty of the total population. The schools of which he says, ”which are now, by the exertions of Your Excellency, placed on an excellent footing, requiring no other improvements than the means of multiplying their number,” were conducted in rude buildings, without any apparatus, with a motley a.s.sortment of textbooks, and taught in many cases by ignorant itinerant schoolmasters who were of no use at any other occupation, and who received from $80 to $200 a year! Little can ever be expected in the way of improvement from those who are wholly satisfied with present conditions, and it is safe to say that any improvements that took place in the Common Schools of Canada under the _regime_ of the Rev. Dr.
Strachan were owing to other causes than the efforts put forth by that gentleman. The Common Schools of Upper Canada had to wait for a new birth--until Ryerson breathed life into them.
Rev. Dr. Strachan's Report is interesting for another reason--it deals with the proposed King's College and its relations with what Dr.
Strachan calls the ”religious establishment” in Canada. This ”religious establishment” was to have as its basis the one-seventh of all lands in Upper Canada as provided for by the Const.i.tutional Act of 1791. Now these two things, the Clergy Reserves and King's College, caused more trouble to the Canadian Legislature and engendered more bitter feeling among the people of Upper Canada than any other two questions that ever were debated in the Parliament of Upper Canada, or in the Parliament of the united Canadas. In the Parliamentary struggle over both these questions the Rev. Dr. Strachan was an active and valiant leader of the party of privilege, and among those who led the opposing forces to a final victory none was more courageous or more successful than Dr.
Ryerson.
Dr. Strachan went to England in 1826 to use his personal influence towards securing a Royal Charter for a University. He there issued an appeal to the English people for aid on the ground that the proposed College would be largely occupied in educating clergymen for the Anglican Church.[23] A Royal Charter, making the proposed university a close corporation under the control of Anglican clergymen, was obtained.
Besides granting the charter the British Government made a grant toward buildings of 1,000 a year for sixteen years.
[23] See ”An Appeal to the Friends of Religion and Literature in behalf of the University of Upper Canada.” By John Strachan, Archdeacon of York, Upper Canada, 1826.
When the Legislative a.s.sembly met in 1828 several members presented numerously signed pet.i.tions praying for definite information about the newly granted charter of King's College. The Governor sent down a copy of the charter which was referred to a select committee. The committee protested against the nature of the charter in that the university was to become an Anglican inst.i.tution, supported out of public funds. This they thought unjust, inasmuch as only a small proportion of the settlers of Upper Canada were Anglicans.[24] The committee also drafted an address to His Majesty the King. This address was adopted by the a.s.sembly, and immediately despatched to His Majesty by the Governor. The address was courteous and loyal in tone, but the exact condition of affairs in Canada was made clear. The King was pet.i.tioned to cancel the charter to King's College, and grant one that would make possible a university for all cla.s.ses. This address to His Majesty and the protest of the a.s.sembly of Upper Canada attracted the attention of a select committee of the Imperial Parliament. This committee[25] reported against that part of the Charter which required religious tests. George Ryerson, of Canada, gave valuable evidence before this committee relative to Canadian affairs. It seems doubtful whether His Majesty's advisers, when the King's College charter was given, were really made aware of the conditions of society in Canada. Those Canadians who had the ears of His Majesty's advisers were, for the most part, interested in forming and strengthening an Anglican Establishment.
[24] See Journals of House of a.s.sembly for Upper Canada, 1828.
[25] See Report made 22nd July, 1828, by Select Committee of House of Commons, appointed to inquire into the State of Civil Government in Canada.
CHAPTER III.
_EDUCATION IN UPPER CANADA FROM 1783 TO 1844--(Continued)._
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