Public Schooling and Religious Strife in Hemmingford

Type of resource
Author/collaborator
Title
Public Schooling and Religious Strife in Hemmingford
Abstract
In August 1844, Irish Catholic families in Hemmingford Township's District School No. 1 complained that school teacher John Hood was forcing their children to take part in “devotional exercises” and to study from religious books that they found objectionable. This was against both the local school board policy and the Education Act of 1841. Two school board commissioners were sent to speak to Hood, but were confronted by a hostile crowd of Hood supporters led by Henry Hazard, the leader of the Anglican mission in Hemmingford and an agent of the evangelical British North American School Society. When Hazard and Hood refused to back down, the board went so far as to set up an alternative school taught by a Catholic master, and took legal measures to regain possession of the original schoolhouse. Although Hood eventually back downed, in 1854 Hemmingford’s Catholics formed a dissentient school board under the auspices of the new parish of St-Romain-de-Hemmingford; this move secured a Catholic education for the Irish families of District No. 1, but forced them to operate within a system dominated by Francophones and an increasingly nationalist Catholic church.
Publication
Quebec Heritage News
Volume
Vol. 2
Issue
no. 8,9,10
Date
January-March-May 2004
Pages
page 9
Language
en
URL
Citation
MacLeod, Rod. “Public Schooling and Religious Strife in Hemmingford.” Quebec Heritage News, May 2004. http://qahn.org/files/quebecanglophoneheritagenetwork/documents/qhn/QHN%20January-March-May%202004.pdf.
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