By Dorothy Nixon

4. Clanranald Elementary:

There was no Clanranald Elementary. There was Royal Vale School on Clanranald where I went to elementary school. It was part of the Protestant School Board of Greater Montreal, whose giant building with the golden doors up on Fielding impressed upon us all the importance of education, in general, and, also, of the Protestant Quebecker's place in the World.

Royal Vale was institutional and dark and dingy. No surprise. School buildings were erected on the same philosophy as prisons, for 'containment' and 'easy surveillance.'

I am told that the Protestant School Board of Greater Montreal was the highest performing school board in North America for a time in the 60's. A huge chunk of these high performing students moved out of Quebec after 1976 (or before) and went on to brilliant careers in Toronto,the rest of Canada and beyond.

There is great truth to the line that The Parti Quebecois made Toronto.

In the 60's the Board hired many teachers from England. England was a pretty poor place, even back then, despite the "Swinging London" publicity in the magazines.

My teacher in the 6th grade, the year of Expo was a Brit who'd just immigrated to Montreal. Her name was Mrs. Bryant. She told us to go to Expo as much as we could as we'd learn more there than at school.

I took her at her word and some mornings I hoped none of my classmates was looking out the classroom window, to see me waiting for the No. 62 bus (Clanranald)on the sidewalk, which would take me to the Snowdon metro and Ile Ste. Helene's and Ile Notre Dame's many splendours.

Imagine, I often went to Expo all my myself!

But many years later I did find my orange sixth grade report card squirreled away somewhere and it did contain only a long list of Very Good's (with one Excellent in Math and a Good in Neatness!) I was very messy!

By the way, my husband's grandmother Marion Blair was the President of the Union of the Protestant School Board of Montreal during WWll.

In 1997, while my children were in school, Quebec Schools changedfrom a Denominational System to a Linguistic System and the PSBGM became The English Montreal School Board (mostly) and the Lakeshore (on the West Island of Montreal) became the Lester B. Pearson School Board .

At the time, some people argued that this was a move to further marginalize the anglophone in Quebec, while proponants argued the opposite: that this move would allow the problems of the English school system to be addressed more directly.

Current problems suggest the former idea might be true. The Lester B Pearson School Board in 2009 has to close on island schools for lack of enrolment. One solution being offered is to make the on island schools 'more French'. From what I know, there are no real English-only schools in Quebec,(with respect to language of instruction and not the language of bulletins sent home by the school secretary)even in the English system. All are French immersion of some sort, even from the earliest grades.

(When my sons went to school, there were no textbooks specifically for the French Immersion program so it was up to the teacher to adapt French texts to the needs of English students. Dumbing it down, so to speak.)

In 1997, with the change from denominational to linguistic boards,some people were worried that this meant 'religious education' would be eradicated from Quebec schools, despite the fact that the right to religious education was entrenched in the Constitution. The provision was repealed, without anyone really paying attention. (I think that's how it happened.)

But just this year in Fall 2008, the Ministry of Education has implemented a new course on Ethics and Religious Study, a very ambitious course aimed at increasing tolerance, understanding, and critical thinking skills in students in a multi-cultural society.

The magazine Education Canada has an article on the course in its Winter 2008/2009 edition.

I recently wrote an article about the program myself for the Quebec Federation of Home and School Associations' Newsletter.

A recent book, A Meeting of the People by McLeod and Putanen, is all about the history of Protestant Schooling in Quebec. Ironically, the first Protestant School is allegedly in Richmond, Quebec, where Marion Nicholson Blair, my husband's grandmother, hails from.Click here for Tighsolas homepage.