Prince Edward This province en tered confederation in 1871, having then a public non-sectarian school system. There are no separate schools, but Catholics maintain a few private schools, including seven convent academies of the Congregation of Notre Dame and the classical college of Saint Dunstan's at Charlottetown.
This province was created by an act of 1870 which, in terms resembling those of the British North America Act, guaranteed the permanence of all rights to denominational schools as then existent, and provided for an appeal to the Dominion against infringements of any other educational rights of the future religious minority. In 1871 a school system modeled on that of Quebec was established, with a board of education divided into Catholic and Protestant committees, 12 Catholic and 12 Protestant school sections, and an equal division of provincial subsidies. Later these grants were divided in proportion to school population. By 1890 Protestant school sections had in creased to 629, Catholic to 90. In that year the legislature created a political department of education, and absorbed all schools into one non-sectarian system, to be supported by taxes which should be levied equally on all property holders but applied only to schools conducted in accordance with the new regulations of the department. These prohibited all religious ex ercises except certain scriptural readings and prayers, approved by Protestants but not accept able to Catholics. The judicial committee of the Imperial Privy Council decided in 1892 that the new laws were valid, as not infringing any right in existence in 1870. The Catholics then sought the other means of redress provided, an appeal to the Governor General. In 1895 the Privy Council declared their appeal to e, legally and materially, well founded, since there had been an infringement of rights acquired after 1870. In 1896 the Dominion government introduced into Parliament a bill to remedy the disabilities of Manitoba Catholics. Parliament's term expired before the bill was passed, and in the subsequent elections Wilfrid Laurier and the Liberal party, who had opposed the bill, were returned topower. Laurier, as Prime Minister of Canada, arranged a compromise under which the Manitoba schools are still ad ministered. The trustees of a school may authorize some slight Catholic religious teach ing, and one Catholic teacher must be employed in an urban school containing 40, or a rural school containing 25 Catholic pupils. The Pope, on the report of his special delegate, Mgr. Merry del 'Val, declared of the new settlement: We have no doubt that these measures have been inspired by a love of fair dealing and good intention. But we cannot conceal the truth. The law made to remedy the evil is defective, imperfect, insufficient') Catholics have never accepted the settlement as satisfac tory, but have been compelled to acquiesce in it. The French bilingual school districts, 137 in number in 1916, enjoy considerable liberty and maintain schools practically Catholic. In Winnipeg, Brandon, and a few other centres, private parochial schools are kept open under great difficulties. There are Ruthenian paro chial schools in Winnipeg and Sif ton. Seven teen convent schools offer secondary education for girls. In 1909 a Lesser Seminary for boys
aspiring to the priesthood was established at Saint Boniface. Higher education is offered by Saint Boniface College, which since 1877 has been a federated college of the University of Manitoba, holding a position somewhat analo gous to that of Saint Michael's in the Univer sity of Toronto.
British British Columbia en tered confederation in Neither then nor since have separate schools been recognized. Catholics accepted without serious opposition the Public School Act of 1872, which organized a non-sectarian system, but protested strenu ously, though unsuccessfully, against the School Tax Bill of 1876, which levied a special head tax for the support of these schools. Catholics maintain a number of private schools: 11 paro chial schools, six academies for young ladies, and two colleges.
Saskatchewan and That portion of the Canadian West lying between Manitoba and the Rocky Mountains was in 1875 granted a certain local autonomy by the Northwest Ter ritories Act, and in 1905 was formed into the provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta. The Territories Act guaranteed to the majority in each district the right to establish such schools as they thought fit, with the concurrent right of the minoriy to establish separate schools. In 1884 the local legislature organized a school system resembling that of Quebec, with a Cath olic and a Protestant section of the board of education, each supervising its own schools. Gradually this system was changed into one approximating to that of Nova Scotia, with the addition of a minority right to separate schools as in Ontario. Under the ordinance of 1901, which was the school law when the new provinces were created, education was administered by a political department of state, with a purely advisory educational council, two members of which must be Catholics. Re ligious instruction as directed by the trustees might be given during the last half-hour of the school day in public or separate schools. The religious minority in any section might establish a separate school. Thus the public school in a section predominantly Catholic may be as much a Catholic school as the separate school in one predominantly Protestant. These rights to religious instruction and to separate schools were made permanent by the Dominion acts creating the provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta. In each province all government schools, Catholic and Protestant, public and separate, are under control of the provincial department of education, are subject to the same regulations and the same inspection, use the same courses of study and the same' text books and receive grants on the same condi tions from the provincial treasury. In Saskat chewan the Catholic ratepayers of a section must support the Catholic school, if there is such. Complete statistics regarding these schools are not available. In 1915 there were in Saskatchewan 14 Catholic separate schools. There is a considerable number of private educational establishments, chiefly convent boarding schools. In Alberta there is a college, Saint Francis Xavier's, at Edmonton West, and a Seminary" at St. Albert.