Publication Details
Title: Schooling in British Columbia, 1849-2005:
Voices from the Past
Editor: Thomas Fleming,
Professor Emeritus of Educational History, University of Victoria
Publisher: Bendall Books Educational Publishers, P.O. Box 115, Mill Bay, BC Canada T: 250-743-2946 / F: 250-743-2910 / E: admin@bendallbooks.com
ISBN: 978-0-9865828-0-6
Size: 6 x 9 inches
Extent: 313 pages
Index: Index of Names
Illlustrations: Historical photographs throughout.
Availability: Spring 2011
List Price: $22 Canadian / $20 U.S.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1: Old Schools in a New Land: The Colonial Era, 1849-1871
Early Times
James Sewid, “Always put the oldest child first”
Schools in the Hudson’s Bay Company Forts and the Crown Colonies
1849: James Anderson, The HBC’s first schoolmaster and schoolmistress
1850: James Douglas, Letter to Alexander Anderson
1850: James Douglas, “Not exactly the man I would choose”
1850: John Sebastian Helmcken, The girls at Fort Victoria School
1851: James Douglas, “A good sound English education and nothing more“
1853: James Douglas, A company school in Nanaimo
1853: Thomas Russell, Remembering Craigflower
1854: Alexander Robinson, Recruiting the Reverend Edward Cridge
1856: Edward Cridge, A report on Victoria schools and schoolmasters
1857: James Douglas, Nanaimo’s second schoolmaster
The Rush for Gold and the Growth of Colonial Schools
1859: Cornelius Bryant’s journal
1859: Edgar Fawcett, Victoria’s Colonial School
1860s: Eric Roberts, “Settlers of colour . . . on Salt Spring Island”
1865: Alfred Waddington’s inspection of colonial schools
1865: Amor de Cosmos, “The blessing of education . . .to the poorest as well as to the richest child”
1867: Frederick Seymour, “Any man who respects himself would not desire to have his children instructed without . . . sacrifice on his own part”
Chapter 2: Schools Under Construction: The Frontier Era, 1872-1898
Governing the New Schools
Textbooks for Everyone
1872: Editorial, The Daily British Colonist, “Free education . . . within the reach of every child”
1872: John Jessop, “Better for the government to educate those children”
1873: John Jessop, “Boys and girls . . . are getting ahead of the public school curriculum”
1874: John Jessop, “Inspecting schools by steamer, canoe, horseback, and foot”
1874: John Jessop, “Scarcely a foot of breathing room”
1874: John Jessop, “The persistent refusal of . . . families”
Even Then There Was Paperwork
Early High Schools
1876: Editorial, The Daily British Colonist, “The gift of the country”
1876: Editorial, The Daily British Colonist, “Beyond the reach of politicians”
1876: Emily Carr, “More . . . English than the English”
1877: “Progress,” The Daily British Colonist, “Brakes upon the wheels of progress”
A Scandal at Cache Creek
1877: A. Irwin’s letter to John Jessop
1877: R. Clemitson’s letter to John Jessop in The Daily British Colonist
1877: C. Semlin’s letter to The Daily British Colonist
1883: C.C. McKenzie, “Advantageous to amalgamate”
1884: Stephen Pope, “The advantages . . . of frequent inspection”
1887: J.B. DeLong, “Tall, green, shy, and awkward”
1890s: Jan Gould, “A strange man appeared to be following her”
1892: Harry Assu, “At first Mr. Walker didn’t speak Kwakwala”
1893: William Burns, “A casual remark made by a teacher”
Chapter 3: Public Schooling’s Golden Age: The Institution-Building Era, 1899-1919
1899: The Victoria Daily Colonist, “Absurd to expect teachers to take the place of the parent”
1899: The Victoria Daily Colonist, “Not of a character to inspire confidence”
1899: S.B. Netherby, “A lasting sense of truthfulness in the child”
1901: The Victoria Daily Colonist, “Sudden death of John Jessop”
1901: The Victoria Daily Colonist, “The board will have to take the advice of the ladies”
1901 and after: The Lake News, “The fear of God into every one of us”
1901: The Victoria Daily Colonist, “Suspensions of Miss Agnes Deans Cameron and Miss Mary Williams”
1902: Ada McGeer, “When I passed into Miss Cameron’s classroom”
1903: A.C. Stewart, “As efficient and attractive as possible”
1903: Alexander Robinson, “Pouring out money so lavishly”
1905: The Vancouver Province, “Safer in the hands of a central administration”
1900-1920: New Educational Cathedrals
All Decisions, Small or Large
Alexander Robinson
1906: The Vancouver World, “Tsar of a scholastic empire”
1907: Gordon (Won) Cumyow, “And . . . Chinese school after that”
1910: Harold Campbell, “Some children had been ‘imported’”
A Typical Teacher
1911: Clare McAllister, “Dressing for school in winter”
1913: J.B. DeLong, “I wondered if I’d come out safely”
1914: Bernard Gillie, “Latin scholars by the yard”
1914: J.B. DeLong, “The teacher has no control”
1914: Bernard Gillie, “Reduced to tears”
1915: Francis Decker, Margaret Fougberg and Mary Ronayne, “That teacher’s rating would suffer”
1916 and after: Dorothea Smith, “All my schooling was in Victoria”
1917: William Plenderleith, “Thinking I had gone to heaven”
1918: George Hindle “The one avenue open to a girl”
1918: Samuel Spetch, “Settlers in out of the way places”
1918: George Hindle, “A genius for . . . routine work”
1919: J.B. DeLong, “The nearest I ever came to a nervous breakdown”
1919: British Columbia Department of Education, “Even fair progress cannot be expected”
1920: Harry Dee, “The buttocks of a peasant”
Chapter 4: Schools in Good Times, Depression and War: The Era of Deferred Equality, 1920-1945
1920: James Sewid, “That’s how I got my little education”
1920: Christopher Wright, “Inspecting us, not the teacher”
1920s and after: “The only school nurse in Vancouver”
1920s: Doug Wallis, “Nothing like a union”
1921: Arthur Anstey, “The cruel overcrowding of our children”
1922: Carlyle Clay, “He would have been prime minister”
1923: The B.C. Teacher, “Best-educated farmers get the biggest returns”
1923-1930: East Vancouver’s “square mile of crime”
1924: G.H. Gower, “Report on Kelly Lake”
1925: Bernard Gillie, “The courage to go back and go on”
1925: J.H. Putman and G.M. Weir, “Education is life, not a mere preparation for life”
1925: Bernard Gillie, “J.L. Watson, the prince of administration”
1926: William Burns, “A sense of humour is sometimes useful”
1926: Carlyle Clay, “You can’t do here what God Almighty didn’t do.”
1927: Stewart Graham, “The most important man”
1926: Alice Glanville, “They can’t laugh at the teaching . . . being done.”
1927: Mildred McQuillan’s diary
1927: Bernard Gillie, “Help, what do I do now?”
The School Inspector
1927: Stewart Graham,“My first inspector was a tremendous gentleman”
1927: Gerry Andrews, “You already know how to handle this situation”
1927 and 1928: George Emmila, “Dear theacher [sic]”
1928-1930: “Many nationalities and only one flag”
1927: Stewart Graham, “A considerable rivalry”
1930: Carlyle Clay, “A particular liking for my wife’s muffins”
1930s: Dorothea Stafford, A principal’s work at Woodfibre
1930s: “Because I was so rich”
1930s: “Expected to provide the soup”
1932: William Gibson: “I could see Canon Hinchliffe . . .Minister of Education wincing noticeably”
1933: Stewart Graham, “The education department‘s ‘unofficial’ official representative”
1933: Christopher Wright, “You don’t have the job until . . . the letter of appointment”
The Women’s Welfare Officer
Lottie Bowron, Report on Blind Channel, Thurlow Island
Getting Around the Province: “Trust to Luck on the Weather”
Ray MacLeod’s letter to Miss Lottie Bowron
W.R. Dunwoody’s letter to education superintendent, S.J. Willis
A Plan for the Peace River
1935: Bernard Gillie, “H.B. King and the ‘new curriculum’”
1937: H.B. King, “The department should not be feared!”
1939: John Burnett, “If it’s a boy, we’ll call him John”
1940: Carlyle Clay, “This thing with you and King”
1940: Harold Stafford, Report on the Mennonite settlement at Burns Lake, B.C.
1940: Bernard Gillie, S. J. Willis: “The kingpin around here”
1942: Nobue (Margaret) Shiga Minato, “These were all Canadians, you know”
1943: Memorandum from Education Minister H.G.T. Perry to Premier T.D. Pattullo regarding “educationally underprivileged areas”
1945: Ray Williston, “Find out if administration is your cup of tea”
1945: K.F. Alexander, “A deserted gas station was turned into a classroom”
Chapter 5: Schools in Boom Times: The Era of Consolidation and Expansion, 1946-1971
1946: Maxwell Cameron, “The equality . . . must be rough, but . . . substantial”
1946: Stewart Graham, “Changing the north through the schools”
1946: George Weir, “Making good citizens”
1946: J.B. DeLong, “High school methods course was a waste of time”
1946-1950: Carlyle Clay, “You don’t know how good a fire it was”
1950s: James Sewid, “They used to just send old missionaries”
1951: H.G.T. Perry, “The problem of private schools”
1951: Harold Stafford, “From logs to steel”
1951: John Calam, “Settling into the teacherage”
1952: John Burdikin, “A great start as new immigrants”
1952: Stewart Graham, “What the hell are you doing . . . in a government car?”
1950s: Harry Assu, “Not for you people”
1953: Hilda Neatby, “So little for the mind: An indictment of Canadian education”
1953: Harold Campbell, “Mass secondary education presents a challenge”
1954: Ray Williston, “Minister of education with 10 minutes notice”
1956: K.F. Alexander, “The total enrollment was American”
1956: The Vancouver Province, “Modern education superior to old-time teaching”
Before and After Sputnik
1960: British Columbia Royal Commission on Education
“Intellectual development . . . is essential for human survival”
1960: J.F.K. English, “Now, as always, the school is an agency for intellectual training”
1961: Frank Levirs, “Weaknesses in the existing system”
1963: The B.C. Teacher, “Maternity leave”
1968: Frances Fleming, “I married and settled down never to teach”
1968 and 1969: Donald Campbell, “The corpse above the classroom and a teacher with the snake skin covering”
1971: Norma Mercer, “The most exclusive men’s club in Vancouver
Chapter 6: Schools in Politics and in Schools:Public Education’s Baroque Era, 1972-2005
1972: Eileen Dailly, “The school system is organized like an industry”
1972: Joe Phillipson, “The traumatic experience of meeting Mrs. Dailly”
1972: Terry McBurney, “School supervision in the north”
1972: Joe Phillipson, “The Bremer commission”
1973: Eileen Dailly, “The commissioner . . . has not been altogether successful”
1973: Henry Armstrong, “This couldn’t be the agenda”
1973: Jack Fleming, “The most archaic management structure I had ever seen”
1973: Henry Armstrong, “Government and the BCTF have been accused of terrorist activities”
1973: Frances Fleming, “Whitey says they are all failures!”
1970s: Donald Campbell, “A B.C. school in the Alaska Panhandle”
1970s: Barbara Naef, “Travelling in the north”
1973: Frances Fleming, “Which one would you like us to use on your little girl?”
1974: Harry Cullis, “I decided to leave the superintendency”
1974: British Columbia Department of Education, “Creation of the Nishga School District”
1975: Walter Hardwick, “A terrier for high standards”
1976: Alan Newberry, “Larger than the country of France”
1979: Jim Carter, “The move from public education toward private schools is building”
1980s: Peter McLoughlin, “From servants of the Crown to employees of the boards”
1984: Barbara Naef, “I was asked . . . if I was a good dancer”
1984: The Victoria Times-Colonist, “Heinrich rules out education probe”
1985: Crawford Kilian, “School Wars”
1985: Provincial School Review Committee, Let’s Talk About Schools
1988: Royal Commission on Education, 1988, A Legacy for Learners
1995: Mike Crawley, Termination of the Year 2000 program
1999: The Globe and Mail, “Parents put heat on B.C. schools”
2001: National Union of Public and General Employees, “B.C. introduces legislation limiting teachers’ strikes”
2004: Ken Novokowski, “The result was a change in government”
2005: Andrew Coyne, “The strike as kitsch”
2005: The Globe and Mail, “School boards plan appeal to highest court”
Introduction
Since the colonial era in what is today British Columbia, people have had something to say about schools. This is not surprising because schools are easily the most accessible of all society’s institutions. They are society’s great meeting place and serve as a ready forum for the expression of diverse ideas, cultural values, political views and agendas, personal sentiments and beliefs, along with individual dreams and social aspirations. “Everyone’s been to school,” a college mate once professed, “so everyone’s an expert on education and, therefore, has a view.”
Of course, people’s views and understandings about schools—as well as their expectations for them—change with time and have done so since the first school was established in Fort Victoria more than 150 years ago. What British Columbians have wanted from schools, and what have they said about them, are the two things that have led to this collection of writings.
Broadly speaking, this volume has attempted to chart the sentiments British Columbians have held about schools since the mid-nineteenth century, and to show the various points of view individuals have expressed about schools and their purposes since this time. Wherever possible, this collection has tried to present first-hand accounts of people’s educational observations and perceptions at particular points in the past, as well as the meanings they have assigned to their own school experiences. Such accounts, to be sure, do not provide a complete rendering of events at any single moment in time, but they do provide particular angles of vision into the places schools occupy in our lives and their significance as social institutions. These stories, I hope, also bring a freshness and immediacy to our understandings of the past—a sense of being there not always found in academic or conventional historical writings. ..
To guide readers, the stories have been organized chronologically and divided into six chapters, each stretching across about a quarter of a century...Chapter 1 presents materials from the establishment of Fort Victoria by the HBC in the 1840s to the final days of the colonial regime on the eve of Confederation in 1871. It examines attempts by early colonists to use schools to perpetuate a British class structure before tracing the emergence of civic demands by more democratic-minded settlers to render the “blessing of education,” as newspaper editor Amor de Cosmos put it, “to the poorest as well as the richest child.” Chapter 2 samples writings from the frontier era in provincial schooling when the outlines of a new public school system were first constructed and when early superintendents, such as John Jessop, tried to frame the organizational structures necessary to support schools across a vast and unsettled territory in the last half of the Victorian Age.
The great movement to build schools during the first two decades of the twentieth century is the subject of Chapter 3, a “golden age of schooling,” when schools of cathedral-like proportions greatly reshaped town and city skylines. Chapter 4 presents stories of settlement and struggle amid the exuberant 1920s and the disillusionment of the Great Depression that followed. Throughout this interwar period, children and teachers in British Columbia still confronted many difficult physical challenges in a province that still very much resembled a frontier.
War’s end in 1945 ushered in a new era of growth and good times that would last until 1971, as Chapter 5 illustrates. The entire governance and administrative system for British Columbia’s schools was revamped during this time of consolidation and expansion. Schools and school districts grew impressively in size as hundreds of small schools and districts were closed or amalgamated. High schools, institutions once mostly reserved for elite students, now opened their doors to everyone, a move not without some difficulties as the writers in this chapter remind us.
Chapter 6, the concluding chapter in the volume, deals with the world of the schools from 1972 to 2005. More specifically, it presents materials that illustrate the emerging trends of schools in politics and politics in schools. The immense growth that marked public schooling in the last half of the twentieth century—and the great public expenditure required to support it—virtually ensured that public education could not remain forever politics free. But the intrusion of partisan politics into education has had certain costs, as the writings and interviews featured in this chapter observe. In a break with the past, British Columbians appear to have become increasingly separated from their public schools, fatigued with the fractiousness that has marked the relationship between government and the BCTF in recent decades, and increasingly disposed toward alternative kinds of educational opportunities for children in and outside public schooling.
Finally, no apology is made for the brevity of the historical forewords that precede each of these chapters, or for the short introductions used to identify the writers and sources of the materials. My intention has been to set the stage quickly and let the stories stand on their own as direct and personal statements, mostly undisturbed by the historian’s hand. I believe that the stories and documents selected here are complete in themselves and that, as such, they speak explicitly and cogently to the province’s educational heritage and identity.
Sample Text
1849: The HBCs first schoolmaster and schoolmistress, James Anderson
James Robert Anderson was the son of Alexander Caulfield Anderson, a factor in the HBC and a close friend of James Douglas. Young Anderson was born on June 19, 1841 at Fort Nisqually at the end of Puget Sound near the Cowlitz River route to Fort Vancouver. When James was nine years old, he was sent by fur-brigade route via Fort Hope to Fort Langley and from there to Victoria by canoe, a trip he did not expect to survive. He was enrolled in the HBC boarding school under the none-too-tender care of the schoolmaster, the Reverend Robert Staines, and his wife. His memoirs, written later in life, provide a remarkably vivid account of early life in the colony and his impressions of British Columbia's first school master and schoolmistress:
The school was presided over by the Reverend R.J. Staines (Cambridge) and Mrs. Staines . . . Mr. Staines, of rather uncertain temper, and disposed at times to be unduly severe in administering corporal punishment was nevertheless a good student and teacher in natural history and personally I can conscientiously say I was never cruelly or even severely chastised, corporally; as in all truthfulness I must admit some of the other boys were. . . Mrs. Staines was a much more energetic person, she it was who really kept the school going and in spite of many undoubtedly adverse circumstances managed comparatively most creditably.
The school building like those of the others within the fort yard was constructed of squared logs not very carefully put together. The garret we occupied was not lined, simply the bare logs with interstices; where the roof joined the wall was a veritable runway for the numerous rats which infested the building. These disgusting rodents not content with making use of our dormitory as a place of meeting, and generally disputing our rights in the boldest manner, actually attempted to share our meals. One bold marauder got into my bed and was purloining a crust of bread I had secreted when I discovered his presence and...
1876: "Beyond the reach of politicians"
The Daily British Colonist
If our free schools are to be maintained they must be placed on a pinnacle beyond the reach of politicians. So long as this is observed the people will consent to be taxed for the support of the system. But let it be once invaded and the fabric will totter and finally fall for want of a financial prop.
1901: "Suspensions of Miss Agnes Deans Cameron and Miss Mary Williams"
The Victoria Daily Colonist
Miss Agnes Deans Cameron was almost never out of the news for one thing or another. On this occasion, along with her colleague Miss Mary Williams, principal of the Girls' School in Victoria, she defied the superintendent of city schools, Frank Eaton, over practices used in promoting pupils:
Rumors of serious friction between the city superintendent and some of the principals of the public schools were current in the city yesterday. Inquiry confirmed the reports of trouble, which culminated yesterday morning in the suspension of Miss Agnes Deans Cameron of the South Park School "The difficulty arose from a conflict of authority between the superintendent and the principals, regarding the observance of the new regulations governing promotion examinations. The new rule is that oral examinations shall be substituted for written ones in all the subjects except two . . . This, it is alleged, did not meet the views of certain principals, and they resolved to ignore the instructions of Mr. Eaton and continue to use written tests as under the old system. The principals are accused of having so far forgotten their duty of obedience as to hold a meeting and decide to openly defy the superintendent, but they strenuously deny this, declaring that the meeting was held for a wholly different purpose."
About the Author
Thomas Fleming is a professor of educational history at the University of Victoria. He was born in Dublin and was educated in private, public, and parochial schools in Ireland and in the provinces of Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia. He studied history at the University of Victoria, where he completed B.A. and M.A. degrees, before undertaking further graduate study at Stanford University and the University of Oregon, where he earned a Ph.D. in the history of educational administration. No stranger to the real world of administration, he has managed several private-sector companies and served as Assistant to the President at both the University of Victoria and the University of British Columbia.
Dr. Fleming has written numerous articles on British Columbia school history and policy and was appointed as a research director and Editor-in-Chief of the 1988 British Columbia Royal Commission on Education. He co-authored the volume A History of Thought and Practice in Educational Administration, a study that has become a standard reference work in the history of school management in the United States. He is currently a professor of educational history at the University of Victoria where he recently received the Faculty of Education's inaugural "Excellence in Teaching" award.
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