The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval by Adrien Leblond de Brumath
page 93 of 229 (40%)
page 93 of 229 (40%)
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indifferent to the education of his flock; we find him as zealous for
the progress of primary education as for the development of his two seminaries or his school at St. Joachim. Primary instruction was given first by the good Récollets at Quebec, at Tadousac and at Three Rivers. The Jesuits replaced them, and were able, thanks to the munificence of the son of the Marquis de Gamache, to add a college to their elementary school at Quebec. At Ville-Marie the Sulpicians, with never-failing abnegation, not content with the toil of their ministry, lent themselves to the arduous task of teaching; the venerable superior himself, M. Souart, took the modest title of headmaster. From a healthy bud issues a fine fruit: just as the smaller seminary of Quebec gave birth to the Laval University, so from the school of M. Souart sprang in 1733 the College of Montreal, transferred forty years later to the Château Vaudreuil, on Jacques Cartier Square; then to College Street, now St. Paul Street. The college rises to-day on an admirable site on the slope of the mountain; the main seminary, which adjoins it, seems to dominate the city stretched at its feet, as the two sister sciences taught there, theology and philosophy, dominate by their importance the other branches of human knowledge. M. de Fénelon, who was already devoted to the conversion of the savages in the famous mission of Montreal mountain, gave the rest of his time to the training of the young Iroquois; he gathered them in a school erected by his efforts near Pointe Claire, on the Dorval Islands, which he had received from M. de Frontenac. Later on the Brothers Charron established a house at Montreal with a double purpose of charity: to care for the poor and the sick, and to train men in order to send them to open schools in the country district. This institution, in spite of the enthusiasm of its founders, did not succeed, and became extinct about the middle of the eighteenth century. Finally, in 1838, Canada greeted |
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