I am the product of a thoroughly Christian education – Catholic elementary schools through Grade 8, and Saint Joseph’s High School, a private, all-girls convent school, through Grade 12. Public funding was not fully extended to Catholic high schools until 1984, under Premier Bill Davis. Whether this should be the case in our modern diverse society is an argument for another day, but the first British North America Act of 1867 guaranteed public education support (up to Grade 8) to “Her Majesty’s Roman Catholic subjects and Her Majesty’s Protestant subjects”. This is important – the idea was that Catholics and Protestants were to be treated equally and given equal opportunities to educate their children as they saw fit. At that time the vast majority of the population of Canada belonged to one of these two Christian groups, and the few followers of other religions were actively discriminated against.
The Separate elementary schools taught Christianity from a Catholic perspective, where the doctrine in most areas is not a whole lot different from other Christian denominations but which has some different traditions. Until the Reformation of the sixteenth century, in western Europe to be Christian was to be Catholic, a word which simply means “universal”. Reformed Churches continue to acknowledge this in the reference to “the holy catholic church” in the Apostles Creed.
In 1951 the Catholic schools did not offer kindergarten, so I was sent to a public school for kindergarten. That’s where I learned to sing three children’s hymns that have stayed with me all my life – Jesus Loves me, Jesus Bids Us Shine, and When He Cometh. When my boys were in public elementary school in the eighties, they had a weekly Bible Study class prescribed by the Ontario Curriculum. How times have changed. These days, many public schools are reluctant to mention Christmas even in its secular sense, lest somebody be offended. How then did the faith-based education of Catholic children differ from the public school education of everyone else?
In elementary school we opened and closed each day with a prayer. We had a formal “Catechism” lesson daily where we memorized questions and answers which grew increasingly more complex as we advanced in grades. Example: Q: Who made us? A: God made us. Q: Who is God? A: God is the Supreme Being who made all things. These were the first two questions in the primary catechism, which I still remember today. The Presbyterian Church also uses catechisms as teaching tools to instruct members on core Christian beliefs and Presbyterian doctrines. These catechisms, often in question-and-answer format, cover topics like God, sin, salvation, and the Christian life. The Westminster Catechisms are prominent examples, widely used by various Presbyterian and some other denominations.
We were prepared by our teachers to first participate in the sacrament of Holy Communion in Grade 2 at the age of seven. “First Communion” was then, and is today, an important ceremony marking the so-called “age of reason”, when a child is expected to know right from wrong, is morally responsible for her own behaviour, and is old enough to become a full-fledged communicant. I vividly remember my First Communion Day, more than seventy years ago, as I nervously paraded up the aisle of St. Charles Church with the other second grade children, girls in white dresses and boys in little suits and ties. My siblings tell me it done differently now – children receive their first communion in the company of their parents, to prevent undue anxiety. I still have the little white prayer book given to me on the occasion by an aunt. We were taught to pray regularly, to turn to God in times of trouble and of thanksgiving. We learned to read from a series of Readers called “Faith and Freedom”, which was similar to the public school “Dick and Jane” series, except that the children were David and Ann and Baby Mary, the dog was named Zip instead of Spot, and the Readers included child-based ethical situations and simplified Bible stories. At an early age, God, and especially Jesus, became very real to us, and entered into many of the decisions we made in our day-to-day lives.
There were some perks, too. We got some extra holidays, called “Holy Days of Obligation”, when it was our duty to go to church – which we did, of course, but the rest of the day was our own. One which comes to mind is November 1, All Saints’ Day, which, being the day after Halloween, caused some jealousy among our Protestant friends who had to go to school. (Those extra days off have long since been eliminated.)
And so, on to High School where my Christian education continued where the elementary school had left off. When you walked in the front doors of my high school, you first passed the chapel, the set of double doors on your left. Outside the chapel, on a little table, was a basket of lace handkerchiefs for girls who had forgotten their hats, as women and girls must cover their heads when entering a church. (Remember, this was 1959.) Our school uniform included a hat, a felt tam-like structure universally hated by the girls, which we were expected to wear to school every day but which was often conveniently “forgotten” at home. We bonded over hating those hats. You could almost tell the time of year by the traffic at the chapel. It was busiest at exam time, when many bargains with God were being made inside. If you had studied, you reminded God of this and asked Him to make sure your efforts were rewarded. If you had not studied, you pleaded with God to somehow enlighten you with enough information to pass – often offering Him something in return, such as saying so many extra prayers or performing some act of penance. I was a good student, and rarely had to make such a deal with God.
You headed off to your classroom, where you remained for most of the day. Our teachers, (about half were Sisters of Saint Joseph, who lived in the attached convent; half were lay teachers; all were women) rotated to us for the different subjects instead of the other way around. We were taught the Ontario High School Curriculum, and we were taught it well. When I transferred to a public high school for Grade 13, I found I was ahead of my class in several subjects, notably English and Latin, and more than holding my own in others. Grade 13 algebra would have given me grief under any circumstances!)
We had a formal Religion lesson every day, using a series of textbooks called “Our Quest for Happiness”. Every class period started with a prayer. We had a yearly three-day retreat, during which special speakers were brought in, and we were encouraged to pray, read the Bible, and reflect on how to be better Christians.
When I was at St. Joseph’s (1959-1963), the school was a private, all-girls high school receiving no public funding. My parents paid tuition for me every year. They were not rich, but I had won a partial scholarship out of Grade 8, which encouraged them to send me there. My five siblings were not so privileged – they all attended public high schools. The school was situated in the Six Points area of Etobicoke, where the Tapestry retirement community is now. Right beside St. Joseph’s and sharing a mutual driveway was Michael Power High School for boys. In my day, woe betide the girl who was caught hob-knobbing with a boy in that shared driveway – she was sure to receive a stern lecture from our formidable principal. Today those two schools are joined into a single co-ed school, Michael Power/St. Joseph’s, now situated at the corner of Renforth and Eringate, just up the street from Graceview. I assume the girls are allowed to talk to the boys these days.
I remember my days at St. Joe’s very fondly. I loved it there. I loved the structure and the discipline and the comfort of believing beyond a doubt that no matter what happened, I had a friend in Jesus. I loved wearing a distinctive uniform to school, in the days before school uniforms became the norm in Ontario. Our spring/fall uniform was a regulation blue tunic and white blouse; our winter uniform was a navy blue, very itchy, wool serge dress with a white collar and cuffs which were removable and washable. Today it is unthinkable that anyone, let alone a teenage girl, would actually wear such a garment. By the end of a term, the air was pretty ripe, as most of us owned only one uniform dress and it had to be dry-cleaned. Many present-day co-ed Catholic high schools have eliminated the more modern kilt as part of the girls’ uniform and gone to pants, feeling that pants are more modest than the traditional kilt which was often hiked up thigh-high by many of the girls. At St. Joe’s we hiked our dresses up, too, but they were hastily yanked down again if we saw a teacher approaching. The proper length of the dress was such that it grazed the ground when you knelt on the floor, and no one wanted to be told to kneel so the length of her skirt could be observed!
I have such warm memories of those days. I remember assembling in the gym, by class, every day after lunch, to hear announcements from our principal (there was no P.A. system) and then marching to class row by row, often to the tune of Colonel Bogey’s March. I remember my Grade 11 English teacher, Miss Cameron, who so inspired me with her passion for English Literature and who was kind and compassionate enough to make some accommodation for a student (me) with a stutter who was terrified to recite or read aloud. I remember my classmate Nancy Ellis, who one day was caught smoking in the bathroom and got suspended for such a terrible offence. Her classmates were shocked that a St. Joe’s girl would do such a thing.
If I loved St. Joe’s so much, why did I transfer to a public high school for Grade 13? At the end of the summer after Grade 12, I had been in Nova Scotia with my grandparents, arriving home during the last week of August. The difficult Grade 13 year was looming, the year in which so much of the educational efforts of both students and teachers would be directed toward the dreaded Departmental Examinations in June, where every graduating student in Ontario wrote exactly the same set of exams. We were facing as many as nine three-hour exams, written over the course of as many days, and 100% of our final marks was based on those exams. When I got home from Nova Scotia, my father suggested that it might be a good idea to take my final year in a public high school, to make sure I was well prepared and smooth over any gaps I might have in my education to date. If I had had more time to consider the matter I might have refused to make the switch, but at the time it seemed like a new and exciting adventure, and I agreed. I lived to regret that decision many times over the next year, which I spent feeling like a fish out of water and plotting ways to get out of going to school. Quite a turn-around for a studious kid who had previously not wanted to stay home from school even when sick. However, I did adjust and it worked out okay in the end.
But I digress… The bottom line is that at St. Joseph’s our days were marked by a close relationship with a God who was very real and personal to us. We were taught that we had a moral duty to worship Him in church every Sunday, and we fulfilled that duty faithfully. It would not have occurred to me, as a high school and university student living at home, to announce to my family one Sunday morning that I wouldn’t be going to church that day. Attending church was accepted, and never questioned, as an important part of living a Christian life. I suspect it was that way in most of your homes, too, when you were growing up. My five siblings, all of whom attended Separate schools as far as Grade 8 but then transferred to public high schools, also continued to attend church without question, at least until they left home. As children and teenagers, we had learned to love God, to be kind to our friends and neighbours, and to demonstrate that kindness every day. In short, we did indeed learn how to be Christians in what was then a solidly Christian society.