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SCHOOL
TEACHERS AND PREACHERS The Loyalists were so busy in
clearing the land and getting the new home into shape that little time was
left for looking after such matters as educating the young. There were no
laws regulating the school system, no buildings nor funds for school
purposes, no officials to take the lead, and what was done was the
spontaneous outcome of a desire to equip the rising generation for the duties
of citizenship. *The first enactment of any kind respecting schools in
Upper Canada was passed in 1807. This made very inadequate provision for the
establishment of one public school in each district. The first legislative
attempt to encourage, assist, or regulate common schools was by an Act passed
in 1816. Both of these statutes were very crude and left much to be desired. The first efforts were those of
the mother and other elder members of the household. Later on a few families
clubbed together and employed a man to instruct their children in the
rudimentary elements of a common school education. There was no building for
the purpose, so a room was set apart in one of the dwellings, probably the
only room on the ground floor, and while the good housewife busied herself
about her duties on one side of the room the teacher was training the young
ideas how to shoot on the other side. For one or two weeks he would remain
with this family, getting his board and washing and two or three dollars a
week, and then he would move on to the next neighbour with his little flock,
and so on until the circuit of his subscribers of five or six families was
completed, when he commenced again at the first. As late as 1818 in a contract
entered into between a teacher and a few of the farmers in one of the first
townships, we find the covenant to teach in the following words: "That
the party of the first part engages to keep a good school according to his
ability, and to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic." His hours were
from eight o'clock in the morning until four in the afternoon, with one and
one-half hours for noon. He was to teach every alternate Saturday. In
addition to his board, lodging, and washing, he was to be paid the princely
salary of twelve and one-half dollars a month, "whereof one-half in cash
at the end of the quarter and the other in orders or other value
monthly." Soon the little log school-house
appeared, not larger than fifteen by twenty feet, with a door in one end and
a window on each side. On the inside holes were bored in the logs about two
feet six inches from the floor, pegs inserted, and upon these pegs rested a
plank. This was the desk, and the pupils, while working at it, necessarily
sat with their faces towards the wall. A rude bench without a back was the
only seat. Books were very scarce. About the only real school book that ever
found its way into the hands of the pupil was Mayor's spelling book. The New
Testament was the universal reader, and if any other books were in use in the
school the teacher was the only one who had access to them. The three R's:
"Reading, Riting, and Rithmetic" were the extent of the general
curriculum. There were no authorized text-books, and such as were in use were
far from perfect. * The Act of 1816 required the trustees of each school
to report to the district Board of Education the books used in the school,
and it was lawful for the Board to order and direct such books not to be
used; but no one was clothed with authority to order what books should be
used. For many years the
only Geography used in the schools contained the following information
relating to the continent of America: The next answer must have been
particularly enlightening to the ambitious youth thirsting for knowledge. "What is New
France?" Having given this very lucid
explanation the author then proceeds to make his readers feel at home by
acquainting them with their neighbours. "What does the
East contain?" "What is New
Britain?" The painful part of the story of
this most extraordinary geography is that what I have already quoted was all
there was between its two covers in any way touching upon North America. *Documentary
History of Education in Upper Canada Vol. I page 166 The great drawback to the
legislative efforts to improve the system was the lack of uniformity. Each
section, and later, each district, followed its own inclination, and no
satisfactory results were attained until Egerton Ryerson introduced his
reforms, and brought every school in Upper Canada under the same general
supervision. The old teacher of the pioneer
days is gone from us forever, and, while he served his day and generation as
well as he could, we cannot entertain any feelings of regret that he will
never return. Brute force played an important part in his system of instruction.
The equipment of no school was complete without the tawse or leather strap,
and the offending pupil was frequently despatched to the neighbouring woods
to cut from a beech tree the instrument of torture to be applied to his
particular case. The minor parts of speech were
recognized as such, not from the functions performed by them in the sentence
in which they appeared, but from the fact that they were in the list which
the pupil was forced to memorize. "With" was a preposition because
it was in the list of prepositions, and "forth" was an adverb
because the teacher said it was , and if by chance, from nervousness or any
other cause, the boy with a treacherous memory failed to place it under its
proper heading, a flogging was considered a proper chastisement for the
offence. It sometimes happened that a boy did not see eye to eye with his
teacher upon this question of corporal punishment, and a scrimmage would
ensue. If the teacher came out second best, his usefulness in that
neighbourhood was gone. To be learned, as the teacher
was supposed to be, was a distinction which gave him a certain amount of
prominence, and opened up for him several other fields of usefulness. He was
frequently called upon as arbitrator to adjust complicated accounts, or to
settle disputes in the measurement of wood of lumber, or to lay out a plot of
ground with a given acreage. He was the court of last resort in matters of
orthography and spelling. If he happened to be of a religious turn of mind,
he might be called upon to fill the pulpit in the absence of the regular
clergyman. The Squire and the school
teacher each played his part in the administration of the affairs of the
neighbourhood. Each carried some weight and commanded a certain amount of
respect; but both yielded first place to the clergyman. While there were
several other denominations, the Anglicans, Presbyterians, and Methodists
formed the great mass of the population. The Anglicans were the pampered
class; they received most of the public favours and were correspondingly
haughty and independent. For the first fourteen years of the settlement the
clergy men of this church enjoyed a monopoly in the matter of marrying. It
was a common occurrence, before there was a Protestant parson or minister
duly ordained residing in the province, for a Justice of the Peace to tie the
knot, and in rarer cases still for a military officer to perform the
ceremony. * All such marriages were confirmed and made valid by "The
Marriage Act" passed in 1793; and it was declared lawful for a Justice
of the Peace to solemnize marriages under certain circumstances, when the
parties lived eighteen miles from a parson of the Church of England. In 1798 the privilege of
performing the marriage ceremony was extended to the ministers of the
Presbyterian Church, and as they did not insist upon the wedding party going
to the church, the "meenester" secured many fees which otherwise
would have gone to his Anglican brother of the cloth. The great democratic
body of Methodists were severely handicapped, and did not come to their own
until 1831, when the gate was thrown wide open and the clergy of nearly every
recognized religious denomination were placed upon the same footing in
respect to marrying as the Anglicans and Presbyterians. Some of the extreme Loyalists
could not reconcile Methodism and loyalty to the Crown, and the records
inform us of more than one persecution for preaching the doctrines of the
Methodist Church; in fact; one duly elected member of the Legislative
Assembly was refused his seat in the House, because he had upon occasions
filled the pulpit in a Methodist meeting-house. It is only fair to those who
supported such extreme measures to explain that these extraordinary
occurrences took place at a time when the feeling in this country against the
United States was very strong, and the Methodist body in Upper Canada was
under the jurisdiction of a General Conference across the line. The life of a preacher even in
our day is not one of unadulterated bliss. But as far as the comforts of this
world are concerned, the modern clergyman has a very easy time of it when
compared with the life of the pioneer preacher of a hundred or more years
ago. Then the clergyman travelled on horseback with his Bible and a change of
clothing in his saddle-bags, preaching ten or twelve times a week in
churches, school-houses, taverns, and the log cabins of the settlers,
wherever a few could be collected to receive the Gospel message. In all kinds
of weather, he might be seen plodding along through the heavy snow drifts, or
fording the unbridged streams, upon his holy mission to the remotest corners
of the settlements. No complaint escaped his lips as he threaded his way
through the lonely forest, now and then humming a few snatches from some old
familiar hymn. Perchance he halted beside a spring for his mid-day meal, and
fervently thanked God, from Whom all blessings flow, as he hauled from his
spacious pockets the sandwiches furnished by his host of the night before. His circuit extended sometimes
for fifty, sixty, or an hundred miles, and he rarely spent his evenings at
home, if he had one, but slept where night overtook him, glad of the
opportunity to share a bunk with his parishioners' children, or make himself
as comfortable as he could upon a mattress on the floor. His uniform may have
been frayed and not of the orthodox cut; his sermons may not have possessed
that virtue of brevity which so many congregations now demand; they may have
fallen far short of some of the sensational discourses of to-day; but he was
a faithful exponent of the Gospel, the plain and simple truth as he found it
exemplified in the life of our Saviour. That the pioneers closely followed
the tenets of the Golden Rule is largely due to the self-sacrificing efforts
and exemplary life of the early missionaries. Among the Methodists no other
religious gathering could compare with the camp-meeting. It was the
red-letter week of the year, given up wholly to prayer, singing and
exhortation. In selecting a location for these annual gatherings there were
several details to be considered. The first essential was a grove, high and
dry, and free from underbrush, accessible both by land and water. The
auditorium was in the shape of a horseshoe, about one-half acre in extent,
surrounded by tents made of canvas or green boughs supported by poles. Across
that part corresponding with the opening in the shoe was a preachers'
platform. In front of it was a single row of logs - the penitent bench - and
the rest of the space was filled with parallel rows of logs - the pews. Thither by land and water came
the devout Methodists of the district; but then, as now, the women far
outnumbered the men in their religious observances. With them they brought
chests of provisions, their bedding, and Bibles. Morning, noon, and night the
woods resounded with songs of praise, the warning messages of the preachers,
and the prayers of the faithful, pitched in every conceivable key. The
surroundings seemed to add an inspiration to the services. When the great
throng joined fervently in "All hail the power of Jesus' name", to
the accompaniment of the rustling leaves, the hearts of all present were
deeply moved. During the closing exercises, marching in pairs around the
great circle, with mingled feelings of gladness and sorrow, they sang lustily
the good old hymns and then, with many affectionate leave-takings, dispersed
to their several homes. The Methodists looked upon
dancing not only as a very worldly but also as a very sinful form of
amusement, and as the violin was closely associated with the dance it also
was placed under the ban. The Loyalists were musically inclined, but during
the first years of the settlements little opportunity was offered for the
development of their talents in that direction. Later on singing in unison
was extensively practised, and singing schools were organized during the
winter months in nearly every neighbourhood. There was a great scarcity of
musical instruments before the introduction of the accordeon and concertina,
both of which were invented in 1829. The members of the Society of
Friends, or Quakers, as they were more commonly called, were sorely
handicapped by reason of their refusal to take an oath under any circumstances.
By their strict adherence to this article in their creed they were debarred
from holding any public office, or giving evidence in any court of law. That
this was a great hardship, from which no relief could be obtained except by
legislative enactment, goes without saying. One of their number was regularly
elected to the first Parliament and trudged through the forest to the seat of
government at the assembling of the members. From purely conscientious
scruples he refused to take the prescribed oath, so his seat was declared
vacant, and he trudged back home again. It is not to the credit of the
other denominations of Christians, that no steps were taken to relieve the
Quakers from the disability under which they were placed, until after twenty-five
years of patient endurance. It is true the disability was self-imposed; but
they were actuated by the purest of motives, and their exemplary lives and
standing in the community entitled them to more consideration from their
fellow citizens. The relief first extended to them, after the lapse of a
quarter of a century, was only partial, and allowed then to give evidence in
civil courts by a simple affirmation instead of an oath. The Legislature
having to that extent admitted the principle of affirming instead of taking
an oath, could find very little to justify its course in postponing for
another twenty years the admission of the Quakers to their full rights, by
accepting their affirmation in criminal courts and in all other matters in
which an oath was required. The Quakers took a most decided
stand against the law of primogeniture, whereby the eldest son of a man who
died intestate inherited all the real estate of his father to the exclusion
of all the other sons and daughters. In this respect they were in advance of
their age and insisted upon an equitable distribution among all the children
of the deceased. Many a young Friend was given the alternative of dividing
among his brothers and sisters the real estate thus inherited according to
law, or of submitting to the humiliation of being expelled from the Society.
To their credit it can be said that very rarely was there any occasion to
enforce the latter alternative. The statute abolishing primogeniture came
into force on January 1st 1852. The Quakers were uncompromising
in their opposition to the liquor traffic, and could be relied upon to
support all measures for the advancement of temperance. They were progressive
in educational matters; they established and maintained efficient schools,
and generally took a deep interest in all matters directed towards the
general improvement of the country. Beneath their quaint garb and solemn
faces, there frequently was found a deep sense of humour, all the more
effective when expressed in their peculiar form of speech. Chapter
1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter
4 Chapter 6 Chapter 7
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