Selling Education: The Problems of Convent Schools in Acadian New Brunswick, 1858-1886‪.‬

Teaching Sisters came from Quebec to open schools in the Frenchspeaking areas of New Brunswick because Bishop Rogers of Chatham, Pere Camille Lefebvre, C.S.C., Director of the bilingual classical college of St.Joseph, and several parish priests told them they were urgently needed. They called on the Sisters to improve the level of religious education by setting up convent schools, by training girls to teach in the public school system, and by training girls to bring up their children as good Catholics. (1) Sisters who could communicate in French were welcomed because the public schools were desperately short of good francophone teachers in the mid-nineteenth century. Only six teachers with French surnames had first or second class licenses in 1861. (2) The Acadian population of New Brunswick was growing: in 1861, there were approximately 33,000, and the 1871 census showed 44,907, accounting for over 15% of the population. (3) The convent schools would be successful because the Sisters were not daunted by the initial difficulties and were able to satisfy the needs of many young Acadian women and their parents. However, at first, convincing Acadians that the education they offered was valuable was a challenge. Most of the Sisters who came to New Brunswick knew they would be pioneers in areas where people had never even seen a female Religious. (4) They understood the need to persuade parents of the value of education, as many Acadians were short of cash and educating daughters beyond the elementary level was not yet a high priority. (5) Their efforts to educate women also made them the focus of conflicts based on varied interpretations of the role of women in Acadian society. These were intensified by the differences between Quebecois and Acadian society. Maritime francophones who sent their children to convent schools in the mid-nineteenth century were forced to see themselves in the context of a francophone society epitomised by the urban centres of Quebec.