The Education of Girls in Private Schools on Vancouver Island
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Playing the Game: The Education of Girls in Private Schools on Vancouver Island by Alice Trueman Bachelor of Arts, University of Calgary, 1967 McGill Diploma in Education, McGill University, 1969 A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS in the Department of History Alice Trueman, 2009 University of Victoria All rights reserved. This thesis may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy or other means, without the permission of the author. ii Supervisory Committee Playing the Game: The Education of Girls in Private Schools on Vancouver Island by Alice Trueman Bachelor of Arts, University of Calgary, 1967 McGill Diploma in Education, McGill University, 1969 Supervisory Committee Dr. Patricia Roy, (Department of History) Supervisor Dr. Lynne Marks, (Department of History) Departmental Member Dr. Patrick Dunae, (Adjunct, Department of History) Departmental Member iii Abstract Supervisory Committee Dr. Patricia Roy, Department of History Supervisor Dr. Lynne Marks, Department of History Department Member Dr. Patrick Dunae, Adjunct, Department of History Department Member By the mid-nineteenth century academics began to replace the accomplishments in schooling for middle and upper class girls in Britain. Immigrants brought both models to Vancouver Island. Angela College, a religious school clinging to the past, represents the old; Norfolk House, an urban largely day school, and Queen Margaret’s, a country boarding school with some day students, illustrate the two types of the new, reformed schools. This study draws on personal accounts, archival records, and contemporary newspapers to show that parents chose private schools for reasons of ethnic preservation, upward social mobility, and dissatisfaction with local public schools. A comparison of the founding, governance, finance, buildings and grounds, curriculum, headmistresses and teachers, students, parents, and succession plans revealed similarities and striking differences. Parental preference for strong leadership, scholarship, and character- development enabled Norfolk House and Queen Margaret’s to survive; the lack thereof combined with poor management doomed Angela College to failure. iv Table of Contents Supervisory Committee ii Abstract iii Table of Contents iv Acknowledgments v Chapter I Introduction 1 Chapter II The Education of Girls through the Centuries 10 Chapter III The Establishment of Schooling on Vancouver Island 35 Chapter IV Angela College, an Anglican Private School 68 Chapter V The Urban School – Norfolk House 120 Chapter VI Queen Margaret’s – the Country School 161 Chapter VII Conclusion 212 Bibliography 228 Chapter IV Appendix 243 Chapter V Appendix 247 Chapter VI Appendix 253 v Acknowledgments I want to thank Dr. Patricia Roy for all her advice and patience, Drs. Lynne Marks and Patrick Dunae for their timely suggestions, and Dr. Sylvia Van Kirk for her insightful reading. Special thanks to Mary Barton at the Anglican Diocesan Archives and Keith Walker at the Glenlyon-Norfolk Archives for all their help and advice. To my husband, Mark, for his support and endurance through this long process; to John and Dani for their unwavering belief that Mother could do it; to Christian for his encouragement, listening, and thoughtful suggestions when topics became unmanageable. CHAPTER I Introduction Families with sufficient financial means have always sought the schooling, or absence of schooling, which they felt would best prepare their daughters to achieve their values and aspirations. From the time of the Ancient Greeks the primary aim of some parents was for daughters to catch rich husbands, men of property, but this was not always the only objective. By the mid-nineteenth century, some schools in Britain were offering girls opportunities for a „modern‟ education, exercising their brains, and not just training their bodies to be drawing room ornaments. The girls‟ private school system which flourished on Vancouver Island from colonial times through the Second World War combined British traditions of female education with the need to respond to conditions in the settler society and its public schools. Middle class parents of British background expected the education of their daughters to include not only ethnic preservation, the backbone of the British boys‟ private schools in British Columbia that Jean Barman studied,1 but also to fulfill a need for security in a land far away from the support of traditional home and family. The enduring private schools on Vancouver Island recognized and worked hard to satisfy these needs. Although independent schools for girls founded by institutions and supervised by male-dominated governing bodies, as ancillary to their principal duties, did not survive, those founded and conducted by strong-minded, strong-willed women of exceptional stamina and endurance who had a clear vision for their schools did. The women, 1 Jean Barman, Growing Up British in British Columbia, (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1984). 2 dependent upon their schools for their careers and financial survival, knew how the „game‟ of a private school should be played and devoted their lives to winning that game. The men, and the powerless women they hired to be their principals, did not perceive the school to be their life‟s work nor their primary source of income. Parents, much more prepared to accept a vision supported by dedication than a hollow edifice with uncertain leadership, supported such schools with their purse strings. Those school leaders who understood and played the game to attract and retain parents and students, survived, and the ill-conceived, ill-governed failed. This thesis examines Angela College, a religious school founded by the Anglican Church, which failed, and two private venture schools, Norfolk House, an urban school, and Queen Margaret‟s, a rural school, which succeeded. I chose Angela College and not St. Ann‟s as an example of a religious school because its history had received so little attention, Norfolk House rather than St. Margaret‟s as the urban school, and Queen Margaret‟s over Strathcona Lodge School as the country school, because of my familiarity with them, their British traditions, and the availability of research materials. 2 Theories for girls‟ education stretch back to the times of the ancient Greeks. Much has been written, though not always practical, on what is proper in female education. This history, with emphasis on the reforms that evolved in mid-nineteenth century England, is outlined in Chapter II. These nineteenth century ideas spread not only throughout Britain 2 The recently published: Deidre Simmons, Servite in Caritate: The First 100 Years of St. Margaret’s School 1908 – 2008, (Victoria: Morriss Printing, 2007) provides considerable material about St. Margaret‟s School, Victoria BC. The founders were three strong-minded English ladies, similar to those at Queen Margaret‟s and Norfolk House. Unfortunately, the Misses Edith and Isabel Fenwick were drowned in the sinking of SS Iroquois in April 1911 off Salt Spring Island, Miss Margaret Barton survived and continued as headmistress until 1928 and again from 1936-1939. The schools differed in that Miss Barton hired a number of Canadian-trained teachers, whereas the headmistresses of the other schools relied almost exclusively on the graduates of British girls‟ schools and universities. 3 but also to the far corners of the British Empire including Vancouver Island. Two anthologies of writings on education, Classics in the Education of Girls and Women edited by Shirley Nelson Kersey 3 and the more recent Public or Private Education? Lessons from History edited by Richard Aldrich, 4 were particularly useful for identifying predominant trends and non-conformist views for each major era. As the excerpts are all primary sources, although some are in translation, they helped to identify writers who warranted closer study. One of these was Erasmus Darwin who, in his 1797 plan for a new school in Ashborne, Derbyshire, was a forerunner of the reformists who came forward more than half a century later. Many of his practical suggestions and assertions reappear in the day-to-day conduct and management of girls‟ schools on Vancouver Island. A relevant secondary source is Barry Turner, Equality for Some: The story of girls’ education, 5 whose commentary ties trends in female education to social history in Britain and thus provides historical context for letters, speeches, and assorted other writings in each time period. Similarly, schools on Vancouver Island needed to accommodate the variances of their time and place to be successful. Whereas the educational reformers of the latter half of the nineteenth century provided the antecedents for the independent girls‟ schools on Vancouver Island, this was not true for girls‟ private schools in Central and Eastern Canada. Their roots were in an earlier era. Steiger’s Educational Directory for 1878,6 essentially a venue for school advertising, provides insight into which aspects participating schools considered their most enticing features. Whereas almost all of the schools for boys promoted their 3 Shirley Nelson Kersey, ed., Classics in the Education of Girls and Women, (Metuchen, New Jersey: Scarecrow Press, 1981). 4 Richard Aldrich, Public or Private Education? Lessons from History, (London: Woburn Press, 2004). 5 Barry Turner, Equality for Some: The story of girls’ education, (London: Word Lock Educational, 1974). 6 Ernst Steiger, Steiger’s