The Domesday Book Of Queens University (Volume 1)1839-1900 p1-248

SAPIENTIA ET DOCTRINA TABILITAS

lature for these purposes. For a long time, however, these wild lands yielded no revenue for the accomplishment of the objects for which the grant was made, and nothing was done for the education of the people except in adventure and private schools.

"The very first of these, it may be noted, of which there is any record was one opened in Kingston in 1785, by an Episcopal clergyman, the Rev. John Stuart, in a house a little to the west of the spot where Murney's tower now stands in the beginning of his well-known song, "I knew by the smoke that so gracefully curled above the green elms that a cottage was near." For 22 years thereafter, down to 1807, no public provision of any kind was made for the support of schools, although the population had increased to about 100,000. In that year $ 3,200 were

1831-1839

SAPIENTIA ET DOCTRINA TABILITAS

granted by the Legislature for the maintenance of eight Grammar Schools, one in each of the districts into which Upper Canada was then divided. These schools, however widely apart as they were from one another, and in most of which high fees were charged, were available only for the sons of "the more opulent classes," and nothing was done for the general instruction of the people in Common Schools until 1816, when a sum of $24,000 was obtained from Parliment for that purpose. This amount was reduced in 1820 to $10,000, no single school, except in special cases, to recieve more than $50 per annum. For thirteen years following no addition was made to this miserable pittance, although the number of the population had risen in the meantime to nearly 300,000. In 1833 the grant was increased, but only to $22,600, less than had been given seventeen year before, while that to each Gram-

1831-1839

SAPIENTIA ET DOCTRINA TABILITAS

mar School remained the same, and this deplorable neglect of any proper provision for Common and Grammar School education continued down to 1841. In fact nothing was effectually done to improve its condition until 1850, when the American School Act embodying the recommendation of the Rev. Dr. Ryerson was passed, forming the basis of the present school system of Ontario. Bills for a general system and an adequate appropriation for Common School education had year after year been passed by the House of Assembly, but were again and again rejected by the dominant party in the Legislative Council. They were satisfied with extening aid, scantly as it was, to a few Grammar Schools for the benefit of the more wealthy classes and as feeders to a University for which they had recieved a charter as far back as 1829, but which they had not set in operation.

"The result of the course thus pursued was that

1831-1839

SAPIENTIA ET DOCTRINA TABILITAS

in 1839, outside of the Grammar schools just referred to, and even in some of them, the educational condition of the Province was almost at the lowest ebb. One-half of the population of those of school age were left to grow up in a state of semi-barbarism. The annual attendance at school of the other half was for only seven months, generally in log houses with accomodations of the rudest kind, where they were initiated in the mysteries of reading, writing and some imple rules in arithmetic by teachers hired by the year, wretchedly paid and, as might be expected, with a few expectations little qualified for their office. The consequence of this state of things was that in many instances those who could afford it sent their sons to the United States to recieve their education.

"Such were the difficulties to be met, and the evils to be remedied; such were the circumstances, so dif-

1831-1839

SAPIENTIA ET DOCTRINA TABILITAS

ferent from those under which the land of the fathers of many of them had flourished, when the founders of Queen's College, in 1839, for the public benefit as well as that of their children, took practical steps for its establishment by their own voluntary efforts. Having long looked in vain to the powers that were for a system of University and School education throughout the Province they, after anxious deliberation, felt themselves compelled to adopt this course and do what they could to supply the want of a higher training for youth, and as one main object, better qualified teachers for our schools.

"I may here remark, that our friends, the methodists, actuated by similar views, and knowing well the needs of the Province had, in 1836, erected an institution at Cobourg for the purpose of affording a more advanced education under the name of "The Upper Canada Academy," which was afterwards, in August, 1841, merged by Provincial charter

1831-1839