C

From the middle of the seventeenth century, French Catholic orders, headed by the Jesuits, provided some elementary, secondary and women’s education in the northern parts of New France. Following the 1763 English takeover of Canada, numerous new elementary schools were privately erected in order to serve the growing population of, predominantly, Protestant-anglophone immigrants that settled in different parts of the country. The first four decades of the eighteenth century saw failed attempts to develop a state education system in English-speaking Upper Canada, and in the predominantly French-speaking Lower Canada. Nevertheless, after the 1841 Act of Union and subsequent legislation, which created an office of Superintendent of Education for each province, locally administered systems of education emerged. In Lower Canada, then known as Canada East, a dual system of education, one for Catholics and one for Protestants, was established, leaving the two groups completely separated. In Upper Canada, then renamed Canada West, a system of free and universal elementary education was erected, a uniform system of secondary school developed, and teachers’ education and certification were standardised. Nonetheless, separate schools for Catholics were maintained.