Читать книгу Life and Letters of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - Oscar Douglas Skelton - Страница 9

The boy's early schooling was given partly by his mother and partly in the parish school of St. Lin. Under the French régime a fair measure of elementary schooling had been provided, mainly by the religious orders, but with diversion of endowments to other ends and disputes between Church and State as to control, progress after 1763 had been slow. It was not until 1841 that an adequate system came into force. In the school in St. Lin, which is still standing, though no longer used as a school, the children of the late forties learned their catechism and the three R's. For the majority, no further training was possible. For the few who were destined for the Church, the bar or medicine, the classical college followed. In young Laurier's case a novel departure was taken.

Some seven miles west of St. Lin, on the Achigan, lay the village of New Glasgow. It had been settled about 1820, chiefly by Scottish Presbyterians belonging to various British regiments. Carolus Laurier in his work as a surveyor had made many friends in New Glasgow, and had come to realize the value of knowledge not only of English speech but of the way of life and thought of his English-speaking countrymen. He accordingly determined to send Wilfrid, at the age of eleven, to the school in New Glasgow for two years. Arrangements were made to have him stay with the Kirks, an Irish Catholic family, but when the time came illness in the Kirk household prevented, and it was necessary to seek a lodging elsewhere. One of Carolus's most intimate friends was John Murray, clerk of the court and owner of the leading village store. Mrs. Murray took in the boy and for some months he was one of the family. The Murrays, Presbyterians of the old stock, held family worship every night. Wilfrid was told that if he desired he would be excused from attending, but he expressed the wish to take part, and night after night learned never-forgotten lessons of how men and women of another faith sought God. When Mrs. Kirk recovered, he went to her for the remainder of his two years in New Glasgow, but he was still in and out of the Murrays' every day, and many a time helped behind the counter in the store. The place he found in the life of the Kirks may be gathered from a passing remark in a letter from his father forty years later: "Nancy Kirk writes that her father is now over a hundred and beginning to wander in his mind: 'he does not see us at all, but talks of Wilfrid and of Ireland.'"

The school in New Glasgow was open to all creeds and was attended by both boys and girls. It was taught by a succession of unconventional schoolmasters, for the most part old soldiers. The work of the first year in New Glasgow, 1852-53, came to an abrupt end with the sudden departure of the master in April. A man of much greater parts, Sandy Maclean, took his place the following year. He had read widely, and was never so happy as when he was quoting English poetry by the hour. With a stiff glass of Scotch within easy reach on his desk, and the tawse still more prominent, he drew on the alert and spurred on the laggards. His young pupil from St. Lin often recalled in after years with warm good-will the name of the man who first opened to him a vision of the great treasures of English letters.

The two years spent in New Glasgow were of priceless worth in the turn they gave to young Laurier's interests. It was much that he learned the English tongue, in home and school and playground. It was more that he came unconsciously to know and appreciate the way of looking at life of his English-speaking countrymen, and particularly to understand that many roads lead to heaven. It was an admirable preparation for the work which in later years was to be nearest to his heart, the endeavour to make the two races in Canada understand each other and work harmoniously together for their common country. Carolus Laurier set an example which French-speaking and English-speaking Canadians alike might still follow with profit to their children and their country.

New Glasgow was only an interlude. Carolus Laurier had determined to give his son as good a training as his means would allow. That meant first a long course in a secondary school, followed by professional study for law, medicine or the Church, the three fields then open to an ambitious youth. Secondary education in Lower Canada was relatively much more advanced than primary; the need of adequate training for the leaders of the community had been recognized earlier than the need or possibility of adequate training for all. The petit séminaire at Quebec and the Sulpicians' college at Montreal had trained the men who led their people in the constitutional struggles following 1791. Secondary schools or colleges, modelled largely on the French colleges and lycées, had early been established in the more accessible centres, in 1804 at Nicolet, in 1812 at St. Hyacinthe, in 1824 at Ste. Thérèse, in 1827 at Ste. Anne de la Pocatière, and in 1832 at L'Assomption. All were maintained and controlled by the Church.

In September, 1854, Wilfrid Laurier entered the college at L'Assomption in the town of the same name, on L'Assomption River twenty miles east of St. Lin. Here for seven years he followed the regular course, covering what in English-speaking Canada would be taken up in high school and the first years of college. The chief emphasis was laid on Latin; the good fathers succeeded not merely in grinding into their pupils a thorough knowledge of moods and tenses, but in giving them an appreciation of the masterpieces of Roman literature. Many a time in later years when leaving for a brief holiday Mr. Laurier would slip into his bag a volume of Horace or Catullus or an oration of Cicero, and, what is less usual, would read it. French literature was given the next place in their studies, the literature, needless to say, of the grand age, of Bossuet and Racine and Corneille, not the writings of the men of revolutionary and post-revolutionary days, from Voltaire to Hugo and Béranger. Briefer courses in Greek, English, mathematics, philosophy, geography and history completed the seven years' studies. It was a training of obvious limitations, but in the hands of good teachers such as the fathers at L'Assomption were, it gave men destined for the learned professions an excellent mental discipline, a mastery of speech and style, and a sympathetic understanding of the life and culture of men of other lands and times.