Schools at Okanagan Mission Before 1885

The history of schools at Okanagan Mission in the years prior to 1885 gives one an idea of the standards of education expected and provided in such frontier areas in the nineteenth century.

The first white settlers in the region squatted there in 1857-58. After the establishment of the Okanagan Mission by the Oblate Fathers in 1859, settlers began to be attracted to the area by the proximity of the priests and the other white farmers. By the end of July, 1862, at least fourteen pre-emptions of land around the Mission had been recorded, and other settlers simply squatted. The missionaries responded to the needs of the new community by providing a school as early as 1863, for in late November W.C. Young, the constable in charge of the Customs House at Similkameen, travelled through the Okanagan and reported:

The priests have a school for the children of the settlers. On my return I found the Rev. Mr. Richards in a neat school room teaching five or six children to read and write. All instruction is given in this school in the French language.

The language reflects the background of the settlers as well as the priests, and relates to the French-Canadian engages of British Columbia's fur trading past rather than the American and British gold hunters who were then pouring into the province.

In the spring of 1865 the Reverend L. Fouquet, teacher of an Oblate school at St. Mary's Mission, Mission City, petitioned Governor Douglas for financial assistance for the educational activities of both St. Mary's School and the school at Okanagan Mission, which served the local settlers, and mentioned an intended expansion of the latter school. The Mission "has made arrangements for the establishment there this year of a school for the children of the aborigines."

Douglas made a friendly reply, but the amount of actual assistance granted is not recorded. It would not, at any rate, be very much, for the total appropriation for the support of education in the entire Colony of British Columbia in 1864 was only $2245.

Although the Indian school does not appear to have actually been established, the Oblate school for the settlers operated for a few years; it is noted in government reports as having twelve scholars both in 1865 and 1866: six of each sex in the first year, seven boys and five girls the second. But there are no further reports of its existence after 1866, and it may be assumed that it ceased operations then or shortly after. Evidently the priests were unable to keep up the school as well as their other duties, and the settlers were forced once more to do their education at home or send their children to the Coast for schooling.

This lack of schools continued for some eight years during which time British Columbia changed from a Crown Colony to a Province of Canada, and took proper responsibility for education with its Public School Act in 1872. The first Superintendent of Education, John Jessop, was an energetic man who toured the province organizing school districts. He first visited the Okanagan in 1872, when he took an informal census of the school-aged population, children between five and sixteen, but found no school in operation. This he was not able to remedy until his tour of 1874, when he made a lightning visit to the Valley, recorded in his diary thus:

June 8 - To Mission Valley - Held a meeting at 8 pm at Eli Lequime's - Twelve of the settlers present - Addressed them on education matters generally & gave full instructions for the formation of a school district - there being 24 children of school age in the radius of a circle 2 1/2 miles in length. June 9 - Back to Head of the Lake - 36 miles.

The settlers acted quickly on Jessop's instructions, and at their application the Okanagan School District was created on July 31, 1874, its limits being basically a five-mile square north of Mission Creek. They elected their trustees, and found a schoolhouse. William Smithson sold his dwelling house to the government for five hundred dollars, and donated the acre of land on which it stood.

But getting a teacher was more difficult. A year after the establishment of the school district, the position was still vacant. Jessop promised in August, 1875 that "the first available teacher [would] be sent up to open the school", but it was not until nearly the end of December that one was finally dispatched. In the letter of introduction, Jessop directed the school trustees to "make things as comfortable for him as possible [as] it has been a very difficult matter to get anyone to take your school on account of the distance &c, &c".

The teacher, Angus McKenzie, was evidently an efficient educator, for his accomplishments drew praise from the School Superintendent when Jessop made his tour of inspection in 1876:

The children in this newly-established school are making remarkable progress in their studies, especially when the fact is taken into consideration that many of them when they commenced were almost entirely ignorant of the English language.

Mr. McKenzie was described as "very quiet & unassuming", and was said to have gained the confidence of shy and backward children by treating them to large slices of bread and syrup, but he was also an inveterate complainer and his letters to Jessop were full of moans about the poor treatment he was receiving. But despite these, he stayed on until the end of June 1878, when he left to take up a position at Nicola.

Replacement was again slow, and it was not until October that Miss M. Coughlan was appointed as teacher. She continued in the position until the end of June, 1882. Her work was evidently satisfactory, for the trustees, who ordinarily made no comment on the teacher, noted in their annual report for 1881:

the deportment & progress of the pupils is very satisfactory and Miss Coughlan is deserving of great praise for the pains she has taken with the school.

Once again, finding a new teacher was difficult. C.C. McKenzie (who replaced Jessop as Superintendent of Education) reported:

It has been found very difficult to supply the vacancy in this school caused by the resignation of Miss Coughlan, no one being willing to undertake its duties at a salary of $50.

Finally he managed to raise the salary by ten dollars per month, and at that rate R. S. Hanna was engaged in October 1882, and taught there until March 30, 1885.

The surprising thing is not so much that there was difficulty in getting teachers, but that it was possible to get any at all. The average teacher's salary in British Columbia in 1875 was $66.02 per month for men and $56.11 for women; an overall average of $61.07. This was at a time when board and lodging might run as high as forty dollars monthly in the Interior, and when farm hands could earn as much as fifty dollars per month, plus board , "thus clearing as much again as the educated school teacher." From 1874 to 1879 teachers in the Interior received an extra ten dollars per month as compensation for the higher cost of living there, but then this bonus was cut off. The Superintendent of Education, while admitting that teachers' wages compared unfavourably with those of artisans and skilled labourers, argued that because of the sure pay, holidays, short hours, and "consequent many opportunities for mental improvement", the teachers were actually well off. Prospective teachers were evidently persuaded by these arguments, and by their position as a profession, even if an underpaid one, for they continued to accept the poor conditions as the years went by. Indeed, by 1890 the average salary had declined to $59.61 per month.

The teachers had problems other than those of income. Even with the high cost of board prevailing, teachers in outlying districts usually had difficulty in obtaining board and lodging. Mr. McKenzie was able to find a place to stay, but he continually pressed the Department and the trustees to build a teacher's residence connected with the school. There were sometimes other irritations - on one occasion he wrote a report to Jessop:

Please excuse its imperfections for I was half blinded and literally covered by mosquitoes while preparing it. I get no rest from them day or night,... and the people say they never saw them so bad before.

The quality of the education which was provided by the small schools in the Interior was perhaps debatable. Isolated, small, and poorly-salaried, these schools did not attract the better teachers. There were four grades of teachers' certificates, in descending order of qualification and pay: First Class, Second Class, Third Class and the Temporary Certificate, which was issued to teachers who had not passed the examination but were needed to fill empty posts. In 1880, six of the nine teachers in the Interior had nor more than Temporary Certificates, while only twenty-two of the fifty-eight teachers in the lower mainland and on Vancouver Island had just the Temporary Certificate. Another indication of the lower standard of education in the Interior, and at the Okanagan School particularly, is that in the ten years up to 1885 no pupils from that school passed the High School examination. The teaching was of the most basic variety - reading, arithmetic, grammar, and writing - although more esoteric subjects might be included if the teacher felt so inclined. Geography, history, bookkeeping, vocal music, and linear drawing were offered on occasion.

The system of school organization in force at the time was an extremely centralized one, with almost all powers vested in the Provincial Department of Education. The locally elected trustees' only real duties were to oversee the condition of school property and to keep accounts. They had the legal power to appoint teachers, although in practice this was still done by the central authority, but they could only dismiss a teacher if the majority of the School Board consented.

Such a strong degree of central control seemed reasonable when there was no local school tax and all of the funding was provided by the provincial government, but it did mean that the local people had little initiative to take an interest in school matters when they had so little say in them. Jessop complained that "in many districts, a deplorable want of interest was manifested by Trustee Boards and parents in the success and progress of their schools." However, the people of Okanagan Mission were perhaps better than in many places, for they did make an effort to fix up a teacher's residence for Mr. McKenzie and in 1876-77, for example, the account book shows that local people contributed wood, flour, and sixty-three dollars in cash, while the government appropriation for expenses, other than the teacher's salary, was only one hundred dollars.

There was however, little community interest in the school meetings and trustees' elections. At only one annual meeting, that of 1882, is there record of a voter having any comment. The same men continued to hold the trusteeships, apparently uncontested, from 1876 to 1886, except for William Smythson (who had provided the schoolhouse), who resigned on account of illness and was replaced by Alphonse Lefavre. The other two trustees were Frederick Brent and Joseph Christian. The trustees, although responsible for keeping the account books of the school district, were not trusted by the central authority with cash. Teachers' salaries were paid directly by the government, and the trustees had to submit vouchers for the Superintendent's approval whenever they wanted to spend part of the small amount of money granted by the Legislature for incidental expenses. This led to a great deal of correspondence, such as the following letter from the Superintendent to a trustee:

I am directed to inform you that your requisition to be allowed to build two privies for the use of the Okanagan School children has been approved. You are not, however, in the items of Incidental Expenses for 1879, to exceed the vote for that year, namely $40.

The system of requisitions and vouchers also meant that people who did work for the school might have a considerable time to wait before they were paid. N. Duteau and C. Levasseur, for example, were not paid for work they have done in October 1884, namely "mudding" the school and building a privy and fence, until January 1886.

The one educational issue about which the people of British Columbia did manage to become involved was that of religion in the schools. Actually, this battle had already been fought, in the eastern provinces of Canada before British Columbia joined the Dominion and in the Northwest Territories. The acrimony which had occurred there frightened British Columbian legislators and they sought to avoid such problems by running a single strictly non-sectarian school system. This was made particularly strict by the amendments to the Public School Act in 1876, by which no clergyman of any denomination was to be eligible for the position of Superintendent, Deputy Superintendent, Teacher, or Trustee; and by which religious exercises should be limited to the Lord's Prayer and the Ten Commandments, and even these only at the option of the local Boards of Trustees. In 1879 such exercises were completely prohibited, although in 1881 the Lord's Prayer was once again allowed.

The Okanagan School managed to involve itself in the fray over "godless" education. Angus McKenzie, the teacher, wrote a letter to the Victoria Colonist in which he attacked the amendments of 1876, saying "I have occupied a considerable portion of time in giving religious instructions....I consider it my duty to teach my pupils these religious views and sentiments...." For this he was rebuked by Jessop and ordered to confine himself to the regulations of the Act. The feelings of the trustees on the subject seem to have varied; in 1881 the Lord's Prayer was in use during opening exercises, but not in 1885. The priests at the Mission evidently avoided involving themselves in the matter, as their names are not recorded in the lists of visitors to the school, but the schoolhouse was on occasion utilized for Divine Services as was common in most frontier areas.

The school enrolment remained steady throughout the period. It was fifteen in the first year of operation, 1875-76, and varied from twenty-one to twenty-six between 1876-77 and 1884-85. This does not properly reflect the growing population of the Okanagan Mission area because in the early years settlers in other parts of the Okanagan, including Similkameen, Osoyoos, Okanagan Falls, White Valley, Head of the Lake, and other locations, sent their children to board with people within the prescribed school district during the school year. This practice slowly died out as school districts were established in other parts of the Valley. The Okanagan School long continued in operation, although other schools were built and the district was changed several times. The original log building was torn down and replaced in 1906.

Despite John Jessop's statement that "our country schools are small, yet the time of each one of the pupils is valuable as that of a pupil in the most efficient of our city schools", the Interior country schools were distinctly second-rate because of low salaries, remoteness and the high living costs there. The government made little effort to counter this tendency, particularly after the resignation, in 1878, of Superintendent Jessop, who had been "particularly concerned with the problem of providing schooling for the little mining and ranching communities of the vast interior plateau." The lack of concern of his successors may be seen in the abolishment of the ten dollar monthly bonus for teachers in the Interior in 1879, and in the fact that while the Okanagan School had been twice inspected by Jessop, in 1876 and 1877, it was not inspected even once between 1878 and 1885. The trustees accepted such neglect because, perhaps, they expected no better. It is significant that the only time they corresponded with the Superintendent about the work of a teacher, it was because they wanted their teacher forced to keep the school open until 5 pm., working hours for everyone else.

But perhaps the most important thing to note is not the negative aspects of school policy, but the fact that after 1871 the government of British Columbia did consider it part of its duties to provide a free, basic education for all the white children in the province.

SOURCES

Some information about the Okanagan School comes from previous reports of the Society and from Frank Buckland's Ogopogo's Vigil . Apart from these, the primary source is the Annual Reports of the Public Schools of British Columbia , which are a mine of statistical information. There also exist considerable manuscript materials relating to the school. These include the "Okanagan Mission Public School Minute and Account Book, 1875-1909", which is preserved in the Howay-Reid Collection of the U.B.C. Library; and John Jessop's "School Inspector's Diary, 1872-1877" and the "Correspondence of the Superintendent of Education" for the entire period, both of which are in the Provincial Archives of British Columbia. One other book which gives some information, as well as an interesting wider view of the early schools of B.C., is F. Henry Johnson's John Jessop: Goldseeker and Educator (Vancouver, 1971).