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The Schoolmaster
When the Scots immigrants
had sailed from Greenock one at least of the many problems of
a pioneer community appeared to have been resolved. This was
the important one of their children's education. While the equally
important subject of a religious leader for the group had created
disunity and they had sailed without a clergyman, a schoolmaster
had been appointed. And apparently to the satisfaction of all.
Some years later the Reverend Mr. Bell said that Francis Allan,
one of the emigrants, had offered to be the teacher when an appointment
was pending, but he "was rejected: his hand-writing being
the principal, if not the only thing, to recommend him as a teacher".
(1) This, however, is not mentioned in the official emigration
records, whereas the appointment of John Holliday at the annual
salary of £50 did receive full government approval. So
the pioneers came to Canada in the assurance that their immediate
needs for education were met. John Holliday would have no reservations
about his future role in the community.
It was when the settlers
were wintering at Brockville that the first hint was given of
any possible flaw in this pedagogical arrangement. There was
some disagreement between the local colonial administrators and
the appointed schoolmaster. This did not, however, prevent a
settlement being reached for that winter. John Holliday opened
his first Canadian school in Brockville and taught the children
of his fellow immigrants that winter and spring from November
11 to May 28. It was to be discovered later that the terms of
the agreement at Brockville were not clear to both parties. Charges
and counter-charges were exchanged before the matter was finally
settled some four or five years later. (2)
A more serious problem
relative to John Holliday's role as teacher in the Scotch Line
community was soon to arise. It involved four parties and four
positions: that of the government officials toward John Holliday;
that of William Bell as a teacher in Perth; that of the settlers
toward their children's education; and that of John Holliday
toward his appointment as schoolmaster. Only after some years
of disputation among the four principals was John Holliday's
position in the matter approved as correct and his role as schoolmaster
to the settlers finally established.
How long he taught is not
clear. He was teaching as late at 1842, but in all likelihood
did not continue long after that year. It is probable that his
tenure was not continuous, being interrupted for one or two brief
periods when non-payment of his salary forced him to give more
attention to his farming operations.
It is unlikely that any
teaching was done in the summer of 1816. That period would be
given over, understandably, to clearing operations. When, however,
John Holliday had built "the large log building" in
the fall of that year, the building meant to serve as house and
interim school-house, doubtless teaching began forthwith. On
September 21 Col. Cockburn had reported to the Governor that
"a schoolhouse is needed", but this does not rule out
the probability that a school was already in operation in the
schoolmaster's house. According to Mary Holliday the settlers
who had preceded her father to the settlement had selected Lot
A as "a lot for Mr. Holliday where they wished to have their
school". So an early beginning upon his pedagogical duties
would be a moral obligation upon him. He would also be anxious
to begin earning a cash income. Only subsequent events would
show that receipt of this desirable incentive would be long delayed.
The first hint that all
would not be smooth sailing for education on the Scotch Line
under the aegis of dominee John Holliday came in November, 1817.
The Reverend Mr. Bell had reached the settlement in June of that
year. Contrary to the expectation of the Scots on the Line, he
had established his church and his manse in the village of Perth.
He was a well educated man himself and knew the importance of
elementary schooling. So it is not surprising that in November
he wrote in his Journal, "Finding there was no school in
the settlement, I determined to have one established". (3)
With Mr. Bell to "determine" was to act. He at once
proceeded to set up a school in Perth.
Doubtless he had no idea
that this school would affect in any way the teaching being carried
on by John Holliday on the Scotch Line. His school would be for
the children resident in the village. It was receiving the financial
support of the settlers there, most of whom were government officials.
He certainly expected that his payment as schoolmaster would
be from the pupils' fees. When he was notified that he would
receive £50 per annum from the government additional to
the fees, he said the notice was received "to my surprise".
Mr. Bell did not realize, however, how the salary had come to
be paid to him nor the hard feelings which would be generated
in the Scots community as a result.
The local administrative
officials had had what in their opinion were two good reasons
for establishing Mr. Bell as the settlement's schoolmaster. First,
they did not like John Holliday. He had been troublesome at Cornwall:
moreover, his complaints there had been well founded and responsible
officials had been forced to take cognizance of them. Again at
Brockville he had proved less amenable to official decisions
than was to their lilting. So when an alternative to him as holder
of a semi-public position on public pay presented itself in the
person of Mr. Bell, the opportunity to reduce John Holliday "to
size" was not to be missed.
Doubtless, however, a second
and eminently just reason for the appointment of Mr. Bell would
be present to Perth officialdom. Their children in the village
needed a school; the one on Lot A on the Scotch Line was too
far removed for their use; a clergyman was resident among them
and a clergyman was frequently the parish schoolmaster.
What the officials failed
to recognize was the fact that John Holliday's appointment and
salary had been established by the highest authority there was,
Earl Bathurst, Secretary for the Colonies; that John Holliday
held written proof of that fact; and that John Holliday did not
submit to injustice with resignation. What Mr. Bell failed to
realize was that the local officials had procured his salaried
appointment in John Holliday's place and that even then he was
only accepted as a second-best stop-gap, to be shouldered aside
two years later when a clergyman of the Church of England would
be available to supplant the Presbyterian. Mr. Bell appears to
have been quite innocent of any intentional wrong to John Holliday
or the Scotch Line settlers. Indeed, he did his best later on
to see that justice was done to both.
The story of John Holliday's
first years as schoolmaster on the Line is not clear on all points.
The only fact about which there can be no doubt is that his promised
salary was not being paid. Letters and replies to the letters,
petitions and replies to the petitions, reasons and refutations
of the reasons went back and forth between government officials
on the one side and John Holliday, William Bell and the settlers
on the other side. All dealt with the fact that the salary had
not been paid.
The first extant letter
on the subject was from Mr. Bell to the Hon. John McGill on April
5, 1818. The date suggests that almost two years of service had
been given with no remuneration to the teacher. It read as follows:
"When the settlers here left Scotland, they were promised
£50 a year as a salary for a teacher, if they took one
along with them. They accordingly made choice of Mr. John Holliday,
who had been the teacher of a parochial school in the-south of
Scotland .... Since his arrival in this country, Mr. Holliday
has repeatedly applied to the Commander of the Forces, but has
always been answered that no orders had been received on the
subject by his Excellency. He was about to write to Earl Bathurst
but I have requested him to wait till I receive an answer to
this letter, as perhaps you can inform us whether any orders
have been received by the Govt. of the Upper Province respecting
this salary". (4)
Mr. Bells Journal records
that a reply was received in a short time saying that "Mr.
Holliday's salary would have been paid, but for the complaints
that had been made against him". These complaints were two
in number. One was that he had insisted upon taking fees from
the pupils' parents and another that he was insolent to the government
officials in the district.
In a letter sent to the
Governor the next year John Holliday mentioned that he had had
to discontinue teaching. Apparently this closing of the school
took place soon after Mr. Bell's letter to Mr. McGill. For on
August 1, 1818, in a letter to his friend, Rev. Dr. Peddie of
Edinburgh, Mr. Bell stated that at that time there were no schools
operating in the settlement outside Perth. In that place there
were two, - his own and one operated by the Roman Catholic Church.
He added, with an understandable criticism implied, that whereas
his government salary as teacher was £50 per annum, that
being paid the other was £100, "through influence
of the priest". He remarked further that the settlers need
not be without schools since "teachers can be found here
(and) it appeared to be the government's intention (to supply
funds) when this settlement was formed". The inference is
that local authorities were preventing such schools being in
operation.
Meantime, it was known
on the Line that their schoolmaster had received no salary for
his services at Brockville because he was alleged to have charged
tuition fees from the parents. On August 10, 1818, the following
letter was sent to the complainant authority. "We, the undersigned
Scotch Emigrants, do hereby certify that Mr. John Holiday (sic),
who accompanied us from Scotland as our Schoolmaster, taught
our children in Brockville Barracks from Martinmas 1815 to Whitsunday
1816, for which he received no fee whatever, nor did we ever
hear Mr. Holiday express an idea of malting a charge for same."
This statement had nineteen signatures.
A year passed and still
no payment was made. On August 10, 1819, John Holliday wrote
a long letter to Sir Peregrine Maitland in which he set out at
some length the position he took in the matter:
"May it please your
Excellency
To give your indulgent
attention to your humble petitioner, wishing to state to your
Excellency that he is the person who was chosen by the Scotch
Settlers near Perth, U. C., as their Schoolmaster prior to their
leaving Scotland, which choice was sanctioned by the Rt. Honble.
Earl Bathurst, as signified to your petitioner in a letter received
from Mr. John Campbell, Govt. Agent Edin. which letter your petitioner
still has by him.
That the Scotch Settlers in consequence of some false charges
and misrepresentations having been laid against your petitioner,
have been disappointed in receiving the Salary of £50 per
annum promised to their teacher, and their children have been
without the benefit of Tuition since their arrival in the Settlement,
their circumstances being inadequate as yet to pay a teacher.
That your petitioner wrote
to Earl Bathurst on the subject, which letter, containing an
answer to the above charges, agst. your petitioner, was transmitted
to your Excellency, which being sent (as your petitioner understands)
to Captain Marshall at Perth accompanied with an order to make
an investigation into said charges, That Captain Marshall informed
your petitioner that he had written to your Excellency in his
favor, being a total refutation of the charges alledged (sic)
against him.
That should your Excellency
not be satisfied with Captain Marshall's report, your petitioner
is willing that any investigation may be made into his conduct
your Excellency may be pleased to appoint; only he wishes to
have the privilege of knowing and facing his accusers.
That your humble petitioner
requests, that your Excellency will be graciously pleased to
direct that an answer may be sent to inform him and the Scotch
Settlers in general, whether the gracious promises and intentions
of the British Govt. relative to the Schoolmaster's salary will
be fulfilled: & whether he is to receive the amount due to
him for the time he taught at Brockville, or if your petitioner
ought to make a further application to the Rt. Honble. Earl Bathurst
on the subject.
Your petitioner therefore
humbly requests that an answer may be sent as soon as your Excellency
may find it agreeable and convenient, and your Petitioner as
in duty bound shall ever pray,
(sgd.) John Holliday"
Apparently the direct appeal
to the Governor brought no response. This is understandable,
the Governor's advisers in the Perth Settlement holding the opinion
they did of John Holliday. But John Holliday was a determined
man. He enlisted the further support of his fellow settlers and
this time went with them to their minister, Mr. Bell, requesting
his help. Mr. Bell was no strong admirer of John Holliday. He
had admitted as early as March, 1818, that "it is natural
to him to be insolent to every one in authority", so he
was quite prepared to believe he had been so to the "officers
of government in the settlement". "But this",
he added, did not justify them in preventing his salary from
being paid". (5) So, when appealed to by the Scotch Line
settlers for his help in seeing justice done to their schoolmaster,
Mr. Bell wrote to Governor Maitland on December 9, 1819.
"Sir,
The Scotch Line settlers,
on the township line between Burgess and Bathurst have requested
me to beg of your Excellency information respecting the salary
of their teacher, Mr. John Holliday. Four years and a half have
now elapsed, since they left their homes for this place, bringing
Mr. Holliday along with them, to whom Earl Bathurst had promised
a salary of £60 a year. He continued to teach as long as
possible, but being unable to obtain any money, and having a
large family, he was compelled to use other means for their support.
He at last wrote to Earl Bathurst requesting to be informed why
his salary had not been paid. The answer was that it had been
reported to Government that he had charged fees from his scholars,
which they were unable to pay. As this report had no foundation
in truth, the settlers concerned, by certificate which they all
signed, vindicated Mr. Holliday, in the hope that no further
delay would take place. Still however they are disappointed,
and their children left without education. They earnestly request
that you will take their case into your favourable consideration
and either order Mr. Holliday's salary to be paid, or inform
them how to proceed respecting it." (6)
It appears from Mr. Bell's
Journal that the first result of his letter was an explanation
which showed that the authorities at York were confusing the
school at Perth with John Holliday's school on the Line. "Mr.
Holliday's school", Mr. Bell wrote, "was 4 or 5 miles
from mine and in a different district, yet so ignorant were the
Governor's advisers of these circumstances that they confounded
his school with mine." They even reprimanded Mr. Bell for
not realizing that the salary the Government had paid to him
could not also be paid to John Holliday. They suggested that
he had never applied before on John Holliday's behalf because
he himself was getting the salary. Now that the Perth school
had been taken away from him and given to the Church of England
clergyman in Perth he was appealing on behalf of John Holliday.
It is odd that no record exists of the righteous indignation
Mr. Bell must have felt at this imputation of an unfair motive.
In his reply to this explanation
Mr. Bell set forth the differences in the schools, referred to
the promise Earl Bathurst had made, and called upon the Lieutenant-Governor
to fulfill Bathurst's promise.
The last extant letter
in the story was written by the Governor's Military Secretary
to Lt. Col. Cockburn at Perth on December 23, 1819:
"Sir,
Referring to your letter...
on the subject of Mr. John Holliday who emigrated from Scotland
in 1817 (sic) under a promise from Lord Bathurst of being appointed
schoolmaster at the Rideau Military Settlement with a salary
of £50 per annum, I am directed by His Excellency Sir Peregrine
Maitland to acquaint you that ... the representation of Mr. Holliday's
ill conduct by which alone he could forfeit his claim to the
enjoyment of those advantages which were originally held out
to him were totally unfounded. His Excellency therefore directs
that the salary of £50 ... be paid to Mr. Holliday from
the time Mr. Bell was removed from his office".
The proviso that the salary
be paid only from the date Mr. Bell ceased to receive it may
have been made necessary in the eyes of the Upper Canadian authorities
by the fact that Mr. Bell's salary had originally been considered
by them to be the military appropriation authorized by Earl Bathurst
in 1815. If John Holliday did not receive payment for his period
as schoolmaster in Brockville and on the Line from 1816 to 1819
the contract between him and the British Government in 1815 had
not been kept. The part Mr. Bell had played, albeit unwittingly,
in this injustice may have had some part in the ill-will which
developed between them.
Presumably, with the principal
for which he had fought vindicated, and even though full justice
had not been done to him, John Holliday resumed his teaching
career. It was to continue without interruption for at least
twenty-two years.
A century later it is difficult
to assess the quality of John Holliday's pedagogy. Time has changed
the attitude of educationists toward the subject matter of curricula,
the teaching methods to be employed, the acquisition of knowledge
by children, and the discipline necessary in a school-room. The
tendency is to apply the criteria of the present to the performance
of the past, obviously an unfair procedure. Yet even when every
possible guard is taken against that error, the quality of John
Holliday's school cannot be rated very high.
The subjects taught would
be the minimum required by educational authorities of the day.
In a report made from Cornwall on January 29, 1818, on The State
of Education in the Common Schools (of Upper Canada) the "Branches
of Education" being taught at the time were given as "Spelling,
English Grammar, Reading, Writing, Arithmetic and Book-keeping".
That is quite a comprehensive curriculum for primary education.
Even though it omits "Branches" later considered important,
such as History, Geography, Civics, Science, it did provide for
a basic education. John Holliday was not a learned man, had not
had higher education such as Mr. Bell had received. After all,
the original statement of his ability, made in Scotland, had
described him as "an ordinary school teacher". (7)
He could not be expected to provide any advanced element in the
content of his teaching material. So it may be confidently believed
that his school on the Scotch Line would teach the bare rudiments
of "the three R's".
No official report was
ever made on John Holliday's teaching methods. Most schools in
the Eastern District of Upper Canada were subject to annual inspection
and report. In the extant reports of the education authorities
his school, is listed, usually first among those of the district,
but while the others are rated, his is not. The reason for this
omission lies in the fact that his schoolmaster's salary was
not paid from the civil list but from the military. The school
and its teacher had been established direct by the United Kingdom's
Secretary for the Colonies. This removed it from the immediate
supervision of the local educational authority. To a later historian,
this is to be regretted; probably John Holliday welcomed the
freedom from any governmental inspection.
In those days no educational
psychology existed to guide a teacher in his control of children
in a school-room. One simple principle was accepted, make a child
learn by enforcement of strict discipline. A successful school
had a strict disciplinarian at its head. By this standard the
first Scotch Line school was a success. Practically all references
to John Holliday as a schoolmaster tell of this characteristic.
One of his own grandsons (8), who attended the school about 1838
- 42, described his grandfather as "a very severe, even
cruel, teacher". He used to add that he personally had never
felt this severity. Years later residents of Perth told stories
to the effect that John Holliday "used to sit in the chair
and throw sticks of wood at the pupils for misbehaviour".
This is something so inherently dangerous as a procedure that
one doubts if it could have been commonly employed; it reminds
one of the indubitable practice in those days where a schoolmaster
singled out a pupil for punishment by throwing the leather tawse
at him. Over the years memory could change the tawse - a harmless
projectile - into a lethal "stick of wood."
One authentic story of
the period is told by Mr. Bell in his Journal for March, 1831.
He had conducted his periodic examination of the Bible Class
in John Holliday's school-house. The young people behaved badly,
"with levity", according to Mr. Bell. If the teacher
was present during the examination, he had not exercised a very
effective discipline. Later, in the road outside, Mr. Bell saw
Mr. Adams (a resident on the Line) lecturing some of the boys
on their conduct. He explained to Mr. Bell that "they are
wicked", and went on to describe how they had even thrown
snow-balls at his horse. Though to the modern mind this school-boy
behaviour would not be considered very heinous, to Mr. Adams
it was "wicked" and directly attributable to the lax
discipline exercised by John Holliday in the school. "Twenty
such schoolmasters as we have here", he concluded, "would
ruin the country".
If choice must be made,
however, between the reports of his severity and this one of
his laxity in discipline, one would probably find in favour of
the former his stern attitudes on matters other than pedagogical
are in keeping with his grandson's description of him in the
school-room as "a very severe teacher".
The first Scotch Line school
did not continue to occupy John Holliday's house for long. Though
the year is unknown, a log school-house was built at an early
date. Its site was in the township of Bathurst on the west half
of Lot 21, Concession 1. This was at the corner of the Glen Tay
side-road about one-and-quarter miles west of John Holliday's
homestead, and on the other side of the Scotch Line. Later a
frame school was built nearer his house, but probably he never
taught in other than the log building.
As already suggested, it
is difficult for people three or four generations removed from
John Holliday's time to be completely fair in an estimate of
him as a teacher. The inadequacies of his performance are in
part those of his generation and of the pioneer life. Only in
part are they to be laid at his door as due to his personality.
Perhaps even his alleged severity in the school-room had something
in it of value.
A recent assessment of
the contribution the old Scots' schoolmasters of his time made
to their society points up this truth. "These (dominees)
were men whose like will not be again, for values have changed.
But they have left the impress of their ways, - their Caledonian
forthrightness, their rugged dourness, and their stern but now
disappearing moralities". (9) Just such an one was John
Holliday, first dominee on the Scotch Line.
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