The Church and So long as France held Canada, education was entirely in the hands of the Roman Catholic Church. The Jesuits, Franciscans and other orders laid the foundations of the colleges and seminaries which hold an important place in the education of Lower Canada. Thus the system of educa tion was entirely ecclesiastical. Under British rule the attempt was made to establish free schools common to the whole population and !insectaria/1 in character. This was found to be Impracticable. With the union of the two provinces in 1841 separate schools had to be conceded to the Protestants in Lower Canada because the public school system was essentially Roman Catholic; and when, in the same year, the first attempt at a general system of public schools was made in Upper Canada, the Roman Catholics there secured the concession of separate schools, but in a very limited way. This, for many years, was a subject of con troversy, political as well as religious, the Liberal party demanding the abolition of separ ate schools and the Roman Catholic authorities seeking the complete control of the education of their children. Finally, on confederation in 1867, the separate school system was bound upon the province of Ontario; although, as is noteworthy, there are more Roman Catholic children in the public schools of Ontario than in the separate schools. In the Maritime prov inces and in northwestern Canada there are no separate schools.
While public school education has been re moved from the control of the churches (ex cept in Quebec) the great body of the people are anxious that it should not be divorced from the sanctions and influences of religion. In the province of Ontario, the public schools are, with few exceptions, opened daily with prayer and the reading of the Scriptures. In not a few, the Bible is carefully taught. But much depends not only upon the character of the teachers, but also upon the disposition of the school trustees, to whom the law gives a large discretion in this matter. There is a strong feeling growing in the community at large and expressed by resolutions of the different church legislatures that there is urgent need of more ethical and Biblical teaching in the schools and that it is possible to•secure it upon lines accept able to the great majority of the people and with proper regard for the conscientious con victions of those who may differ from them.
Sectarian jealousies greatly hindered the de velopment of higher education in all the older provinces. The struggle in Ontario occupied a very large place, both in the politics and the religious life of the province. The attempt to create a national university was for a long time prevented by the exclusive policy of the An glican authorities, who used public funds for the establishment of King's College in 1843 (the charter was obtained in 1827) upon an ex clusively Anglican basis in spite of the desire of the first bishop who desired to have it upon a broader national line. In 1849 King's College
became the University of Toronto, upon a broad undenominational basis, but not until the Church of Scotland, shut out from King's Col lege, had established Queen's University, and the Methodists founded Victoria University, which is now federated with the University of Toronto. Other denominational colleges sprang into existence. After the secularization of King's College, Trinity University was estab lished by Bishop Strachan, upon an exclusively Anglican basis. The leaders of the broader policy had been broad-minded Anglican laymen, and it was laymen of the same type who, in 1877, established Wycliffe College, federated with the University of Toronto and upon a dis tinctively evangelical or Low Church basis, as opposed to the High Church position of Trinity University. The latter has not realized the expectations of its founders, and in 1904, abandoned its position of isolation and con nected itself with the University of Toronto as a federated college. The result is that, in On tario to-day, there are Church of England, Presbyterian, Methodist and Roman Catholic colleges federated with the Provincial Uni versity; while, apart from it, there still stand the Presbyterian University of Queen's, the Baptist University of McMaster and several Roman Catholic institutions. In Montreal, McGill is virtually a Protestant university, and has affiliated with it Presbyterian, Methodist, Congregational and Anglican schools of the ology, which are themselves affiliated in a measure of theological teaching. In Quebec, Laval University is a Roman Catholic institu tion and the oldest in Canada. In each of the provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick a university was founded under the name of King's College and sustained by means of land and money from the public treasury, but upon an exclusively Anglican basis. The one in Fredericton was remodeled and became the University of New Brunswick, upon a broad, undenominational basis; the other, in Windsor, Nova Scotia, ceased to receive provincial sup port but remained an Anglican university and theological college. Dalhousie University, in Halifax, while undenominational, has not the status of a provincial university. The Presby terians have a theological college in connection with Dalhousie. The Baptists have a university in Acadia, Nova Scotia; and the Methodists a university and theological college in Sackville, New Brunswick.