The origins of public education in Alberta can be found in the 19th century, at which time Alberta was still part of the North-West Territories, itself part of a vast fur-trading empire belonging to the Hudson's Bay Company. In 1870, the Hudson's Bay Company ceded the North-West Territories to Canada. It was out of that immense parcel of land that Alberta would eventually be carved. Alberta's territorial period lasted from 1870 to 1905.
The political backdrop for the founding of Alberta was the birth of Canada as a nation. In the aftermath of the American Civil War (1861–1865), the Fathers of Confederation had met and, with royal assent from Great Britain, established Canada as a nation on July 1, 1867. The original four provinces were Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Manitoba entered Confederation in 1870, due in large part to the initiative of Louis Riel. Soon after, in 1871, British Columbia joined Confederation, followed by Prince Edward Island in 1873.
Some events occurred before the settlement of the Canadian west that proved decisive for its character. In 1870, Louis Riel led the Red River Rebellion in Manitoba. Through his efforts, Manitoba became a province in that same year. Beginning in 1871, the first Indian treaties were signed. By 1873, the North-West Mounted Police had become part of the Canadian presence within the North-West Territories. Red River carts and canoe paddles gave way to rail and steam as the Canadian Pacific Railway crossed the prairies in 1883. In 1885, the North-West Rebellion broke out and Louis Riel once again led the M‚ties. When the Rebellion collapsed, the west was open to immigration under the auspices of the Canadian government.
Public education in Alberta had many precedents before Alberta formally joined Confederation on September 1, 1905 (the same month as its sister province, Saskatchewan). The Hudson's Bay Company had acted as a government of its fur-trading empire. The factors of the Hudson's Bay Company exercised considerable authority in Rupert's Land, always with an eye to the Company's welfare. The Company had encouraged some schooling within the bounds of Rupert's Land, beginning in the Red River Colony. The first schools in what would later become Alberta were private or religious undertakings that occurred with the consent of—and, sometimes, the financial support of—the Hudson's Bay Company.
As early as the 1800s, missionaries were active in Rupert's Land. Many of the earliest missionaries were French-speaking and Roman Catholic. Indeed, before 1870, French was more commonly spoken in the Territories than was English. The Oblate missionary Father Albert Lacombe was typical of the missionaries working in the area that would become Alberta. One part of his missionary work and that of his colleagues was to establish schools. The more important part consisted of maintaining good relations with the various native tribes. St Albert and Lac Ste Anne are place names that bear witness to the French presence in the earliest years of European exploration. Wesleyan and Church of England missionaries were also active in the area that became Alberta. (Refer to Patterson, Chalmers and Friesen [1974] for a description of the efforts of the Wesleyan missionary George McDougall to educate the Indians of the Territories.)
Even before the province of Alberta came into existence in 1905, a form of public schooling was legally operating within the North-West Territories. The North-West Territories Act, passed in 1875, included provisions for education that respected the Protestant and Catholic religious differences within the population. Battleford was made the capital of the Territories in 1876, but in 1882, Regina became the capital because it was located on the main line of the Canadian Pacific Railway. In 1884, the Council of Education of the North-West Territories was established and began passing a series of ordinances pertaining to education. For several years, given the preponderance of French Roman Catholics in the region, the arrangements for education followed the pattern in Quebec, which had a dual system of denominational schools over which church authorities exercised extensive authority.
However, as settlers began arriving from the east, the arrangements for schooling were quickly changed to resemble the practice in Ontario, which followed a sectarian or common school model. Further ordinances relating to education were passed in 1888 and 1892. However, it was the Ordinance of the North-West Territories passed in 1901 that made a lasting impact on arrangements for education in Alberta. The provisions of the ordinance, which established the Department of Education, were incorporated into the legislation establishing the province in 1905. The ordinance also provided for public and separate schools, an arrangement similar to the one in Ontario.
To this day, the figure of Egerton Ryerson is present in some fundamental aspects of the educational system in Alberta. A Methodist minister who worked in Ontario throughout his life, Ryerson is widely regarded as a strong promoter of public schooling and, indeed, as the creator of public education in English-speaking Canada. During the 1840s, free public education was coming into prominence as a social cause in both Europe and North America. Ryerson undertook an extended tour of Europe, during which he examined educational systems in Ireland, Holland, Prussia and England. He also toured parts of the United States. Following these tours, Ryerson was appointed superintendent of schools in Ontario, a position that he held for several decades, from 1844 to 1876. This tenure afforded him ample opportunity to shape arrangements for formal education in Ontario.
Ryerson's views on schooling had an enduring effect in Ontario and beyond. He was a Methodist from a family of British Empire Loyalists. Loyalty to the Empire was an important part of his way of life. Ryerson also believed that schooling was important and that it should not be the privilege of certain classes of society. These views brought him into conflict with John Strachan, the Anglican bishop of Toronto. Ryerson envisioned public schooling as universal, free and compulsory. Although he believed that, ideally, schools should be nonsectarian, he adopted the institutional form of public and separate schools that was already in place in Ontario before he became superintendent.
Ryerson's model of schooling, which he developed with some grant aid from the province, was an astute balance of local and provincial involvement. Local school trustees were part of the pattern of local control of education that Ryerson favored, as was a centralized overseeing of schools by school inspectors. Trustees also had the power to hire teachers and to tax local ratepayers to raise additional revenue to operate schools. The province generally chose the books to be used in schools.
Settlers in the North-West Territories in the late 1800s brought with them a variety of views on public schooling. Not surprisingly, the American tradition of public schooling, which originated in New England, influenced schooling in the Canadian west. Some parallels exist between the American views of public schooling and those of Egerton Ryerson.
In a contemporary discussion of the American public school, Leinwand (1992) identifies Horace Mann (1796–1826), Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) and Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) as prominent promoters of public schooling. As one of the writers of the American Declaration of Independence, Jefferson was tireless in his assertion that public education is necessary in order for citizens to participate intelligently in a democracy.
According to McDonald (1979), two people played an especially important role in establishing the system of education in the North-West Territories. One was Frederick Haultain, a lawyer from Fort Macleod, who was elected to the Territorial Assembly in 1888. The assembly was partially an appointed body, although that feature was gradually changing as the population grew. The second was David Goggin, whom Haultain named superintendent of education for the North-West Territories in 1892.
Goggin's task was to establish the administrative structures for schooling. A graduate of the University of Toronto and an experienced teacher and principal, Goggin was thoroughly familiar with the school system in Ontario. He was also familiar with the west. Professionally, he was greatly respected by his peers and, before coming to the Territories, had successfully directed the normal school in Manitoba for more than a decade.
Trusted by Haultain, Goggin worked quietly in the Territories. As McDonald (1979) points out, Goggin was a promoter of so-called national schools, which he believed would keep the country both united and Anglo-Saxon, as immigrants streamed into the Territories. McDonald (1982, 144) records how Goggin, loyal to the Empire, directed teachers to celebrate the diamond jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1897.
Even in the North-West Territories of the 1890s, well before 1905, Goggin was paying attention to the wide range of matters bearing on the establishment of public schooling. In the territorial period, for example, there was already a prescribed high school curriculum, and high school graduates were regarded as prospective teachers (Walker 1979). The Department of Education of the North-West Territories was established in 1901, during Goggin's time in office. His tenure as superintendent lasted until 1902, when he returned to Toronto. His influence on matters of curriculum remained discernible in Alberta into the 1920s (Sheehan 1979).
The path to public education in the North-West Territories was not without conflicts. Controversy over the question of whether schools should be Protestant or Roman Catholic in the North-West Territories reached a climax around 1905. Carney (1992) provides some insights into the tensions that accompanied the social transitions in Canada's west as Protestant, English-speaking immigrants arrived in the Territories after 1885 and came to outnumber French-speaking Catholics. Although the hostilities never became as pronounced as those in Manitoba, the same religious antagonisms between Protestants and Roman Catholics were active.
The Roman Catholic bishops in western Canada promoted the dual confessional system of education as established in Quebec. Eventually, the bishops acquiesced in the Ordinance of 1901, which was in force when Alberta became a province in 1905. Because of the efforts of Haultain and Goggin, the system of public education set up in the Territories was predominantly under civil, rather than religious, control.
A final feature of the territorial period that shaped the state of schooling was the influence of the British Empire. Because the Territories were part of the British Empire, Anglo-Saxon values were to be predominant. Upon Queen Victoria's death in 1901, Edward VI assumed the throne. The strength of the connection between the West and the Empire on the eve of Alberta's becoming a province was evident during the Boer War, which broke out in 1899. Colonel Steele had no trouble raising some 500 volunteers from the Territories as part of Canada's contribution to the imperial struggle. He formed Lord Strathcona's Horse Cavalry and set sail for South Africa; Lord Strathcona paid the troops' expenses out of his own pocket.
Summary
Alberta's territorial period, from 1870 to 1905, was a time of amazing and rapid transition. At the start of this period, the area was a frontier region with a colonial economy based on fur trading, governed by the factors of the Hudson's Bay Company. In the territorial period, earlier efforts at schooling in Alberta by missionaries, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, gave way to arrangements for public schooling under the civil authorities of the North-West Territories. Frederick Haultain and David Goggin in particular played prominent roles in setting up public schooling. The organization of public schooling within the area that eventually became Alberta closely resembled the arrangements in Ontario and Saskatchewan, Alberta's sister province.
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