The Education of Girls in Private Schools on Vancouver Island by Alice Trueman Bachelor of Arts ...

258 Pages·2009·3.71 MB·English

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.
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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 Educational Directory for 1878, (New York: E. Steiger, 1878).
4

academic programmes leading to university entrance, most of those for girls still
emphasized the accomplishments rather than scholastic endeavour. The same holds true
for a number of school prospectuses from the latter part of the nineteenth century.
Carolyn Gossage in her A Question of Privilege 7 reveals a shift towards academics
during the first half of the twentieth century. Her work is often cited as the authority on
Canadian private schools in the twentieth century, but this is only because there is no
other as comprehensive. It is essentially a catalogue, not an analysis or comparison of
schools. Mrs. Gossage‟s sometimes superficial research leads to discrepancies and
avoidable errors.
Knowledge of the available schooling on Vancouver Island during the colonial
period and after provincial status for British Columbia is essential to understanding the
success of private schools for girls based on the British models. Donald MacLaurin‟s
1936 thesis on the early years of settlement is frequently cited as a comprehensive
summary of conditions up to his time of writing.8 Later historians have drawn on its facts
and figures for education in the colonial era. As MacLaurin did not write about any of the
three schools studied, his thesis was useful only as background.
More recent theses offered varying degrees of relevance. Several were public
school specific and contributed little to private school issues. Elsie Ina Watts in “Attitudes
of Parents toward the Development of Public Schooling in Victoria, B.C. During the
Colonial Period” presented contrasts between parental attitudes toward public education
in city and rural areas which helped to explain the profusion of private schools in

7 Carolyn Gossage, A Question of Privilege, (Toronto: Peter Martin, 1977).
8 Donald Leslie MacLaurin, “The History of Education in the Crown Colonies of Vancouver Island and
British Columbia and in the Province of British Columbia”, PhD thesis, University of Washington, 1936.
5

Victoria. 9 Her arguments on class, religion, and affordability were well documented.
Alison Elizabeth MacRae-Miller‟s “Discourse and Agency at St. Margaret‟s School in
Victoria, British Columbia, Between 1930 and 1950” turned out to be less useful than
expected. 10 It discussed specific issues in a narrow timeframe and only in the context of
St. Margaret‟s School. As these characteristics differed from those I selected,
comparisons were not relevant.
Fortunately, there are many primary sources. Patrick Dunae‟s The School Record, a
guide to archival records, is comprehensive and useful tool for navigating the Provincial
Archives collections of material on education. 11 The Homeroom website, his organic
endeavour of some years, provides links to many sites about both public and private
schools. 12 Although none of the schools studied is featured on the site at present, topics
there assisted in determining the areas of discussion for this paper. In addition to the
sources in the British Columbia Archives, the Anglican diocesan archives and the
Glenlyon-Norfolk Archives were important sources. The Victoria newspaper The
Colonist provides an accessible, though largely untapped, source of information with
articles, announcements, letters to the editor, and advertisements for education, both
public and private, in Victoria and to a lesser extent other locations on Vancouver Island
and the Gulf Islands. Many of these items reveal prevailing attitudes of their day. In

9 Elsie Ina Watts, “Attitudes of Parents toward the Development of Public Schools in Victoria, B.C. during
the Colonial Period”, M.A. Thesis, Simon Fraser University, August 1986.
10 Alison Elizabeth MacRae-Miller, “Discourse and Agency at St. Margaret‟s School in Victoria, British
Columbia, Between 1930 and 1950”, M.A. Thesis, University of Victoria, 2003.
11 Patrick A. Dunae, The School Record :A Guide to Government Archives Relating to Public Education in
British Columbia, 1852-1946, (Victoria: British Columbia Archives and Records Service, 1992).
12 The Homeroom, http://records.viu.ca/homeroom/.