CHAPTER XI.

College and Schools.

Next to John Black's desire for the spiritual good of the people among whom he labored, was his anxiety for the education of the young. Born in Scotland, where to be illiterate is looked upon as disgraceful; brought up under teachers in the parish school, who had a real love of knowledge and whose joy it was to select from their pupils every "lad of pairts"; afterwards well trained in a higher institution in New York State; and having finished his course in Canada at a time when a new educational impulse led to the founding of Knox College, the pastor of Kildonan could scarcely fail to be

AN EDUCATIONIST.

His bent of mind constantly showed itself in his desire to help forward promising youths. It was not enough to him that the parish school of Kildonan should be the best in the Red River Settlement. He took those who were looking forward to professional life, and in his own study drilled them in the Latin and Greek classics, with which he was so familiar. A number of the Kildonan lads went on to higher positions, led in their earlier stages by his kindly hand.

Higher educational facilities were not wanting to Kildonan, for upon the borders of the parish, and beside the very church where until 1851 the fathers of the Kildonan people had attended public worship, was St. John's College. Here a good education was given, and, so far as known to the writer, there were no restrictions placed upon those students who were not members of the Church of England; but John Black desired to mould the leaders of the Presbyterian people after a fashion to preserve the best traditions of the race from which they sprang.

The small number of people in the Red River Settlement, and their remoteness from highly civilized life, was for a time an objection to the founding of another college on the banks of the Red River. Now, however, the vista of hope was opening out before the country, as a new province was entering on its career as one of the Canadian sisterhood. The Kildonan school reached the culmination of its excellence during the years 1870 and 1871 under the direction of Mr. David B. Whimster, a teacher from western Ontario. The attendance was large, the educational interest was great, and a goodly number of the best pupils were being instructed in Latin and French by Mr. Black. Now seemed the time for carrying out the dream which the Kildonan pastor had long cherished.

THE COLLEGE PLANNED.

In the autumn of 1870, the very year in which the young province of Manitoba was born, a provisional board of twelve of the leading Presbyterians of the province signed a prospectus and circulated it through the province inviting assistance for an institution to give a training in Classics, Mathematics, Chemistry, Natural History, Moral and Mental Philosophy, and the Modern Languages. We may certainly say there was no restricted view in the minds of the founders of the infant college. Early in 1871, £300 sterling had been subscribed on the Red River, and before the meeting of the General Assembly material for the new building had been secured and the building was expected to be sufficiently advanced for use in the autumn of the year.

The General Assembly met that year in Quebec, and the Rev. William Fletcher, a commissioner from Manitoba, strongly presented the case for the new college.

THE ASSEMBLY DECIDES.

As usual "some doubted," but the Assembly entered with spirit upon the project, and after certain negotiations the writer was appointed to go to Manitoba and lay the foundations of the new institution. He was ordained for the work in Gould Street church, Toronto, in company with Dr. MacKay of Formosa, and pushed on to reach Manitoba before winter. After a long and toilsome journey, in October the writer arrived at Red River, and looks back with pleasure to the first night spent in company with John Black at Kildonan manse. The Rev. William Fletcher and the writer on arriving at Fort Garry could find no accommodation in the crowded hotel in Winnipeg, and accordingly they walked down the four miles or more to the manse on a pleasant autumn evening.

The Apostle of the Red River, with a mass of iron gray hair, as shown in his portrait, with well marked and yet kindly face, and his Dumfrieshire Doric, not yet displaced by forty years of absence from his native moorlands, was in high spirits. So often had the people of Red River seen those coming to them foiled in their plans by the too early approach of winter that their fears had been awakened lest another disappointment would reach them. But the journey had been made, and now the pioneer, whose tastes had always remained scholastic and literary, even in the remote solitudes of the west, saw one of his strongest anticipations about to be realized. He spoke of the youths ready to go on with their work, of the numbers coming into the country, of the bright prospects of the Church, and the value of education as a factor of national growth. Late into the night all phases of the subject were discussed and plans laid for immediately beginning work.

MANITOBA COLLEGE BEGUN.

A few days afterward the provisional board met, and the name "Manitoba College" was adopted for the new institution--a name which has meant much in the educational development of the western prairies. On November 10th, 1871, classes were opened, and the work immediately took hold of the minds and hearts of the Presbyterian people of the country, and of many others as well. The first building was of logs covered with siding, and so Manitoba College while not emulating the fame of the log college, out of which great Princeton College grew, yet has a similarity in its first housing and surroundings. The cut on page 130 gives a view of the first college building at Kildonan, with the Kildonan church in the background.

In the year following the opening of the college the staff was strengthened by the arrival of the Rev. Thomas Hart, B.D., who was the representative of the Church of Scotland in Canada. Professor Hart came under an arrangement with the Church of Scotland Synod to take part in the educational work, and has in the quarter of a century since his coming labored with unwearied diligence for the good of the college. The co-operation of the two branches of the Church in college work three years before the union of the Churches proved the advisability of the scheme of union, and was the harbinger of that event which has been such a blessing to religion throughout the Dominion of Canada.

REMOVAL TO WINNIPEG.

The college steadily progressed for two sessions, when an event took place which seriously tried the stability and attachment to principle of the Presbyterians of the country, more especially of the people of Kildonan. This was nothing less than the proposed removal of the newly-founded college from Kildonan to Winnipeg. There can be no doubt that this was one of the most trying things to Mr. Black in his whole experience. Kildonan was four or five miles distant from the rising capital of the province. Three miles nearer the city than Manitoba College stood St. John's College. The Methodist Church had opened an academy in the heart of Winnipeg, and the disadvantages of fair development under which Manitoba College lay at Kildonan were manifest. The matter came up in the Presbytery of Manitoba, and the scheme favorable to beginning work in the provincial centre was carried by the casting vote of the Moderator. It was naturally a great grief to the people of Kildonan, and especially to their earnest pastor. To see the longed-for tree of knowledge so speedily plucked up by the roots seemed to the good old pioneer unnatural and uncalled for. And yet it was the struggle between reason and sentiment. The good of the institution itself and the plan to be adopted for its greatest usefulness must be the highest considerations. The matter was necessarily taken to the General Assembly. Mr. Black had not intended to be present that year at the General Assembly, but at the wish of Kildonan itself went in order that he might give the view of the people against the removal of the college. All who were present at that Assembly will remember the address of the valiant representative. With singular clearness and the highest dignity, though with deep emotion, he recounted the struggles of the people of Kildonan, the sacrifices they had made for the Church and country, the hopes that had been awakened, and the damage it would do the college among the relatively small number of Presbyterians yet settled in the country. The Assembly was deeply impressed by the appeal of the devoted and unselfish advocate. The writer recalls the fact of one of the most respected pillars of the church, Hon. John McMurrich, coming to him privately and saying, "I quite agree with the argument in favor of removing the college to the rising town, but it does seem hard that after all the struggles of the faithful pioneers of Presbyterianism on the Red River, and especially after the devoted and self-sacrificing life that John Black has lived, that there can be found no way in which their wishes may be gratified." There was not a member of the General Assembly who did not feel in the same way as good old John McMurrich. But it was a critical moment in the history of northwestern Presbyterianism. To have hesitated at that time would have been to take up the same movement in a few years again with the added difficulty of a falling cause and a sense of failure.

DEPUTATION SENT.

The Assembly acted with extreme caution and discernment in the matter. A commission of two of its members, Drs. Ure, of Goderich, and Cochrane, of Brantford, the former an old fellow-student and warm friend of Mr. Black, was appointed to visit Manitoba and report upon the case. The commission decided that after a year the college should be removed to Winnipeg, and carry on its whole work there. This was naturally a great disappointment to Mr. Black. He was not convinced by the decision, and feared especially that hurt would be done the college among the old settlers of the country. He quoted in confirmation of his opinion the statement made by the Bishop of Rupert's Land, the head of St. John's College, that the removal was a mistake.

In this John Black, to his own surprise and happiness also, found himself mistaken. The Kildonan people, to their infinite credit, stood true to their principles and in the next and succeeding years, numbers of their young men were educated in their own college in Winnipeg, notwithstanding their feeling of disappointment at the loss of the college. Acting in the same manner as he had done when his views were not carried out in regard to the policy of managing the Prince Albert mission, the true-hearted Presbyterian pastor still gave his unwavering support to the college, and for several years when the college undertook the instruction of a small band of theological students, came, in company with Dr. Robertson, at considerable inconvenience to himself, and unrewarded except by the gratitude of the board and the high appreciation of the students, to deliver lectures in church history of which he was so complete a master. It was with the deepest appreciation of his scholarship and high character that the Board of Manitoba College congratulated him in 1876, when the sister institution in the Church, Queen's College, conferred the degree of Doctor of Divinity upon the one who had been the originator and strong supporter of general and theological education among the Presbyterians of the western prairies.

THE UNIVERSITY ESTABLISHED.

The college continued to grow and, after the union of 1875, obtained a building of its own in the northern part of Winnipeg. It became in 1877, along with the Church of England College of St. John and the Roman Catholic College of St. Boniface, a part of the University of Manitoba, which was established in that year. From the first it took the lead in the University of Manitoba, and to-day has upwards of one hundred and eighty graduates in Arts. Dr. Black was among the earliest representatives of the college on the council of the university. The needs of the college became so great that in 1881 the beautiful college building represented in the accompanying cut was erected at a cost of $40,000. The Marquis of Lome laid the corner stone of the new college. Dr. Black lived to see the erection of the building, but passed away too soon to witness its occupation in the autumn of 1882.

The difficulties of the college were many during these early years. As has been said, "this part of its history was the period of uncertainty, and of many sleepless nights for its professors. Eleven or twelve years of no visible means of support, of inevitable friction, arising from the necessary change from Kildonan to Winnipeg, of an utterly insufficient staff for undertaking the university work in which it early took part, and of its professors each weighted down with as much missionary work as an ordinary missionary, to enable them to gain remuneration from the Home Mission Committee--these were the struggles of development with which the young organism grew into strength." No one was more sympathetic than John Black in encouraging the professors in their toil.

During its whole history Manitoba College has been a missionary centre for the west. The authorities of the college have always been anxious to make the college in every way useful to the Church. Its professors have taken a very active part in the home mission work and Indian missions, and its students have been strongly possessed with the missionary spirit. Before the college had the status of a theological college, in co-operation with the Presbytery of Manitoba, it gave instruction to students in theology with the approval of the General Assembly. In the year following that of the death of Dr. Black, Manitoba College was granted a regular theological department, and this part of the college work has been well organized and maintained under Dr. King and Professor Baird. No less than 81 graduates in theology have left the walls of the college between 1878 and the present time (1897). In token of its absorbing interest in home mission work, Manitoba College has willingly placed itself at the service of the Church in conducting a summer session in theology, for the better supply of the mission stations of the synods of Manitoba and British Columbia. Dr. Black would have greatly rejoiced, could he have seen the present prosperity of the institution for which he prayed and labored so long.

PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

The change made by the first parliament of Manitoba from the denominational schools formerly prevailing to a system of public schools was a very striking one. The desire of the Roman Catholics to have separate schools for themselves was granted, and thus the germ of the great question which has for years disturbed Manitoba was introduced. Those, who in the old Red River Settlement days had been accustomed to their parish schools, were not seriously opposed to the separate school system. To them it seemed simply a more systematic way of working their parish schools, and receiving the assistance of a government grant. Dr. Black thus became the representative of the Presbyterian parishes and was a member of the first Board of Education for the province. Matters worked with a fair amount of smoothness, but there was a constant grasping of power by the Roman Catholic hierarchy to make a greater and greater division between the two sections of the board, until in ten years after the formation of the province the Roman Catholic schools were to all intents and purposes managed privately by the Catholic section of the board, and the Roman Catholic Archbishop recognized as the authority by whom, for his own section, all books in religion and morals should be approved. Protests in the newspapers, in political campaigns and otherwise were made against this gradual aggression on the part of the Roman Catholics.

ACTION TAKEN.

The Protestant section of the board at length took action in the matter. A series of resolutions were passed on Oct. 4th, 1876, by a majority of the section, looking toward the doing away of separate schools. The matter promised to bring on a great agitation in the country, and Dr. Black ceased to be a member of the board, though Rev. Dr. Robertson, who was also a Presbyterian representative on the board, held with the majority and ardently approved of the national school ideas. Dr. Black in this matter felt that he could not be a party to interfere with the amity between Protestants and Roman Catholics, which had been a feature of the old days of the Red River Settlement. While he probably differed little from the other members of the board as to what should be done, yet his strongly expressed desire to be freed from the personal turmoil and discussion of this difficult question was regarded, and the burden thrown on younger men.

THE GOVERNMENT INTERFERES.

The Provincial Government of the time became alarmed at the action of the Protestant section of the board, and took the strong measure of reconstituting the board at the time of next appointment. Some of the more aggressive members were replaced by others of a more pacific character and the crisis was thus postponed. Dr. Black's anticipations of the reality of this struggle were by no means mistaken. For several years the question slumbered, with, in 1881, a new aggression on the part of the Roman Catholics, making the two systems more distinct and maintaining the share of joint stock company assessments, which were almost entirely those of Protestant stockholders, _pro rata_ for Roman Catholic schools. Dr. Black's fears of trouble were soon to be realized, for after ominous rumblings, on the incoming of a new government, in a few years the educational change took place (1890), giving rise to what has been widely known throughout the world as the "Manitoba School Question." Dr. Black died a number of years before this reformation came about.