Challenging the Status Quo: An Examination of the History of Catholic Education in British Columbia‪.‬

British Columbia is unique among Canadian provinces in that it has always been and remains the most unchurched region of the country, a fact that has greatly impacted the development of Catholic education there. Even before 1871, when British Columbia entered Confederation, it had rejected the notion of establishing a separate school system. Nevertheless, church leaders, especially Catholics and Anglicans, would continue to fight to obtain such a system, arguing that they were only asking for something that was then the norm in most of the country. In 1978 provincial funding, which now covers about seventy per cent of costs, was made available to all private schools, including religion-based institutions. Because of this, such schools now educate twice the number they did formerly or at present eight per cent of all students in the province. Yet Victoria, in providing public monies, did not establish a separate schools system, for the overwhelming majority of British Columbians are as strongly opposed as ever to that idea. Therefore, such funding could end as quickly as it began. (1) Education in the far west had quite modest beginnings. Church-sponsored schools were started in 1849 when the Oblate, Honore Lempfrit, made the first attempt to establish a Catholic school in Victoria. About then the Hudson Bay Company's Anglican chaplain, Robert Staines, began a similar enterprise. Class played an important role in the type of students in these early schools. That is Staines' school was for the "better classes," namely, the English-speaking children of the Company's management, whereas Lempfrit's was for the "poor children of...[the] French Canadians" or the offspring of the Company's working class employees. However, Lempfrit's forced departure in 1852 after he was accused by the Cowichan of fathering a Native child put a temporary halt to Catholic education in the diocese of Victoria. (2)