CCHA, Historical Studies,
66 (2000), 92-113
The Material Culture of the
Loretto School
for Girls in Hamilton, Ontario,
1865-1971
Christine Lei
The material culture at Mount St.
Mary (the site location of the Loretto School for Girls and Loretto Academy) in
Hamilton, Ontario from 1865-1971 espoused the values of the Institute of the
Blessed Virgin Mary (IBVM, popularly known as the Loretto Sisters) in the
education of young girls and women.This paper examines how the Loretto Sisters
operated the school in relation to material culture, the analysis of
archaeological and architectural documented sources of the buildings, site,
location, and interior and exterior structures of the Loretto Hamilton house
and school.1 The result of this study is to
reveal what the Sisters’ values were in the context of the Hamilton house and
school, and within the broader context of the secular world and sacred society
dominated by male clergy.
The
IBVM was instituted by Mary Ward (1585-1645) in seventeenth-century
England.Ward utilized her own extensive education in French, Italian, Latin,
Greek, and music as the basis for a specific Catholic female education for
upper-class English Catholics. The Loretto Sisters were initially a small group
of voluntary exiles from Post-Reformation England who dedicated their lives to
work in education in St. Omers, Belgium, and throughout the Continent. It was
Ward’s tenet that a Christian education, instilled in future mothers of
Catholics, could save Catholics from paganism and immorality. In addition to
their pedagogy and practice, the IBVM declared themselves Catholic educators
via architectural religious symbolism, and spoke as Catholics in a
predominantly Protestant society.
There
are a number of factors that account for Hamilton being chosen as the location
for an addition to the growing number of Loretto schools in the province. The
Irish teaching order of Sisters was desperately needed in a city with a
burgeoning illiterate and impoverished Irish Catholic population. Around 1830
several major public works had been in need of labourers to complete
construction on the Welland Canal (1824-1833), the Burlington Bay Canal
(1826-1830), and the Desjardins Canal in Dundas (1926-1837). The Irishmen who
worked on the canal projects and their families, numbered about 133 in the
town’s population of 1,075 inhabitants.2 The 1840s witnessed the doubling of the Irish Catholic
population for a number of reasons: there was a decrease in transiency among
Irish emigrants because of a general economic depression; the exodus of Reform
sympathizers and American patriots to the United States following the
unsuccessful rebellion of 1837-38 included very few Irish Catholics; the Irish
had put down roots in the southeast section of Hamilton, an area that would
come to be known as “Corktown.” In terms of ethnic settlement in Hamilton,
ethnicity played no role in the determination of block settlement
configurations before Confederation. As several researchers have noted,
Hamilton showed no evidence of class or ethnic residential segregation: the
Scots lived alongside the Irish, and the rich beside the poor.3 In 1847, Bishop Michael Power of Toronto had complained of “the
members of his flock, in many sections, [who] were inadequately fulfilling
their duties as true children of the Church,”4 and “yearned with affectionate solicitude to procure
religious instruction for the little ones of the flock.”5 In 1865, Hamilton’s Irish
Catholic community accounted for approximately 25 per cent of the city’s total
population.6 Through population growth,
employment opportunity soared in Hamilton between 1851 and 1871. In these 20
years, however, the Irish Catholic population in the work force had decreased
from 25 per cent to 12 per cent and if they were employed, they continued at
the bottom of the occupational hierarchy in unskilled labour in canal and
construction work. In Hamilton, “the Irish Catholics faced discrimination,
which made it extremely difficult for them to escape poverty.”7 There also occurred a gender
imbalance among the Irish Catholics, according to Michael Katz, whereby the
number of married immigrant Irish Catholic women decreased from 71 per cent in
1851 to 52 per cent in 1871. Due to an economic depression from 1857 onwards,
Irish Catholic males were forced to emigrate to the United States in search of
employment. The resulting sex ratio imbalance and delayed marriages8 for women had numerous dire
implications for these destitute women: early “widowhood,” being single, or
illegitimate births.9
In other words, Irish Catholic women were being forced to live a life
economically independent of their husbands. The only career options available
to them in the 1850s were as domestic servants,10 seamstresses, or prostitutes.
The only new and respectable opportunity for female employment was teaching,
and as Alison Prentice and Susan Houston have researched, by 1869, there were
already 566 Roman Catholic lay teachers instructing in both common and separate
schools.11As Bishop Power had noted, the
discrimination and bigotry against the Irish Catholic population had deprived
them of jobs, and most importantly, a decent education.12
On the other hand, by the 1850s
there were well-established Irish Catholic families who had relied on the
convent and seminary schools in Europe (as had Protestants) to educate their
children. This increase in wealth could be attributed to Catholic
entrepreneurs, tavern and boarding house keepers such as John Bradley and
builders, who supported the schools and churches through private donations. It
was here, too, that a pool of labourers, particularly Irish Catholic labourers,
could be found.13
Prentice
and Houston argue that separate school enrolments skyrocketed and then
stabilized by the mid-1860s.14 In Hamilton, this sudden surge in enrolment necessitated
the erection of four separate schools in the downtown area: St Mary’s (1856) on
Park Street North, St. Patrick’s (1856) at Hunter and Ferguson Streets, St.
Vincent’s15 (1860) on Pearl Street, and St.
Lawrence (1864) on Ferrie Street in the north end. The late 1850s and 1860s
witnessed rapid development taking place in the city’s north end. The harbour
was becoming a major transportation centre and the new railway tied in with the
developing road system to supply the rural areas south, west, and north of the
city. Additional industries grew relating to the railway and harbour, and the
north end swelled with the recent Irish immigrants who worked on the major
transportation systems.
Any
discussion of why Hamilton was chosen as a site for the Loretto convent and
school must involve Bishop Farrell of Hamilton who, in a letter written to
Mother Teresa Dease in 1865, reveals his urgency in having the Loretto Sisters
establish a school:
I have no hesitation in
consenting to have your house in this diocese dependent on the Mother House in
Toronto, so that the Superior of the latter house may be enabled to remove or
change subjects, whenever she may deem it advisable, and that she may receive
from the revenues of each establishment all due support for the said Mother
House. It is moreover my intention, that the house to be established in
Hamilton shall be exempted from attending parochial offices, and shall be
provided with Daily Mass, weekly Confession, and the other opportunities of
spiritual advancement usual in your Communities, and in conformity with the
Spirit of the Church.16
The first four teaching Sisters
at Loretto Hamilton took up temporary quarters in a house on Catherine Street
in June 1865 until the commencement of classes on September 16th the
same year.
The
Loretto buildings underwent three periods of architectural change: 1865-1892;
1892-1933; and 1934-1971. These architectural renovations and additions were
directly linked to changes in how the students were being taught, what they
were being taught, and by whom they were being taught. Both the internal and
external structure at Mount St. Mary were imbued with architecture too
symbolically Christian to be a mere coincidence. William Westfall notes that
nineteenth-century Christian architecture in Ontario was a “religious lexicon,
the best architecture was the one that expresse[d] the finest religion most
clearly and truthfully.”17
Hamilton’s
Loretto school and convent had been transformed from an already existent
“four-square section” light-coloured brick building, a former residence of the
officers of the 16th Canadian regimen located on King Street between
Pearl and Ray.18 The land had been sold to the
Roman Catholic Church in 1865, which in turn sold it to the Sisters of Loretto
for $8,000 in 1866.19
The
original Loretto building was characteristic of the Gothic Revival (1830-1900),
an architectural style that utilized an eclectic mix of classical Georgian and
Neoclassical styles, distinguished by the “finishing touches” of the Gothic
style. The simple lancet or pointed window, located in the centre gable above
the main door, is the most common feature of the Gothic style. Other Gothic
indicators include the vergeboard or bargeboard, a roof trim decorated with
curvilinear patterns,20
bay windows, a veranda and a steep roof supporting tall decorative chimneys.
The many gabled windows were not
merely designed for ornamental
purposes but also to allow the maximum amount of sunlight to filter through in
an age without electricity and a desire for better air because of chronic
respiratory illnesses. It was the duty of the Infirmarian, for example, to
keep “clean and well-ventilated yet free from draught” rooms in the infirmary,21 and refectory.22 The intricate planning and
renovations to the then 28-year-old Gothic brick building included a chapel,
school rooms, infirmary, and sleeping quarters. As Roberta Gilchrist notes,
material culture can be configured to have multiple meanings. In her work on
later medieval nunneries, Gilchrist found that archaeology was often imbued
with constructed images of female spirituality obtained by space boundaries.23
The
building was situated on elevated wooded ground. Convents and abbeys were often
located on a hill in order to relate the building as an expression of power,24 “symbolic of higher aspiration”
and to “rise above the commerce of everyday life.”25 On a more practical level,
higher elevation ensured good health,”26 and solved the problem of drainage.27 Urban historian, John C. Weaver,
writes of residential segregation in North American towns, where the quality of
a home or institution depended upon drainage. Several streams, for example,
crossed the neighbourhood of Corktown, one of the least desirable Hamilton
areas that had been developed in the 1830s and 1840s to house the concentration
of immigrant Irish Catholics. Corktown was considerably lower than the sand
ridge running from Burlington Heights to the escarpment, a rise where the
better homes (and Mount St. Mary) were located.28
Forty students were studying
English, Mathematics, French, German, Art, Music, Home Economics, and Religious
Studies in the two-storey red brick walled, wisteria-vined structure with a
chapel on the upper floor and the classrooms and the dining room on the ground
level in 1865. Roberta Gilchrist argues that medieval nunneries tended to have
two-storey refectories that were representative of the coenaculum, the
upper storey of the home of Mary, where women participated in the early church
at Jerusalem.29 Mary is not only the IBVM’s
namesake, but also Mount St. Mary’s. Gilchrist documents evidence that Mary was
a symbol of femininity, virtue and gender identity,30 and so it is not surprising that
many orders had statues of Mary enshrined on their front lawns. Mount St. Mary
was a feminine enclave, inhabited solely by women, whether choir nuns, lay
Sisters or students, presided over by the Mother Superior.
The
Mount St. Mary buildings were maintained by possessions, tuition, diocesan
revenues, donations, patronages, and oblations. In 1865, there was a
summerhouse with an old, unused well in back of it, and an old carriage-house
distant from the convent and at right angles to it to the north. On the front
lawn stood the statuary Holy Family in front of the stately French windows of
the music room. The architecture of Loretto Academy reveals many differing
images of female and maternal spirituality. The statues of the Holy Family,
with Mary holding the infant Jesus (a Gothic image), on the front lawn of Mount
St. Mary reassured parents that not only was Loretto a religious institution
but one that espoused the sanctity of the family. Alison Prentice refers to
nineteenth-century school promoters as “fathers,” whose constant extension of
government control over schooling, and advocation of a system of education
where the public, perceived in the mid nineteenth-century as being inherently
“susceptible and weak,” was a “family” that “required the parental interference
of the state,” to be achieved through free and compulsory schooling.31 This metaphor of the state as a
collective parent to the child had been instituted and promoted by Ryerson as
early as the 1840s.32
Marian iconography also signaled
a variety of meanings associated with
female piety but allowed women religious to “construct and negotiate their own
belief.”33 As teaching Sisters, the
Lorettos utilized Marian imagery not only to reassure visitors and parents of
the maternal quality Loretto Academy had to offer the young girls but also to
reinforce the sexual segregation of both the Sisters and students: the Loretto
School for Girls proclaimed itself a school distinctly for girls who were
taught only by women.
Martha Vicinus’ work on the
architectural significance of women’s schools and colleges indicates that
buildings often resembled large houses, with good reason. This domestic imagery
offered parents the assurance of their daughters’ protection and separation
from the city and street. Parents in the 1860s feared nothing worse than
co-educational schools34
and perceived the world outside their daughters’ institution as being rife with
prostitution and drunkenness. The world verged on the brink of chaos, and the
potential for class warfare, as Alison Prentice writes, made the school
promoters insist on order: “Nature was portrayed alternatively as ‘chaos’ and
‘order.’ As chaos, nature was to be feared; as order, she was to be imitated
and loved.”35 Loretto’s centennial yearbook
praises the domestic character of the original building, its quiet (passive)
location, and doors leading to narrow passages, symbolizing the containment of
women in spaces. There are references in the 1861 Constitutions to two lay
Sisters appointed to visit the house each night to examine windows and outer
doors to ensure that they are properly locked.36 Lay Sisters, in particular, were
instructed to be silent and docile.37
The grounds extended over several
acres and were thickly studded with a variety of shrubs and trees, including
rose bushes, “stars of Bethlehem” and the wisteria vine. There was an orchard
on the left with well laden fruit trees and nearer to King Street, the haw,
mountain ash and walnut trees.38 The Hamilton Herald declared the school “one of
the most attractive education establishments in Canada.”39 A wrought-iron gate enclosed the
grounds. The association of women and wilderness was central to
nineteenth-century traditions of nature as being “healthier, safer and more
beautiful than the unpredictable city ... this widespread belief that women
required protection from the dangers of urban life meant that they were removed
or separated from centres of power” in urban areas.40 It was the portress’ duty, the
keeper of the gate, to refer all persons, letters, notes and messages to the
Superior without giving information to anyone regarding the parcels and letters
received, keep the front door closed, and lock the door by nine in the evening.41
Adornments
in the school and convent were also important indicators of material culture.
The bell, for example, was customarily used by the Loretto Sisters when a nun
was dying to summon all members of the community who were free from duty with
their pupils to assemble in the Infirmary in order to assist the dying with
their prayers.42 The bell, likened to the
authority of Christ, signalled to the Sisters that they must obey. Obedience,
to the Lorettos, was the most important vow. The 1861 Constitutions implored
that the “strictest union should exist” between the local and Chief Superior –
“a union founded on obedience.”43 Vicki Bennett
argues that church bells were especially valued by Anglicans for their
“mystical signification”44
and by the Catholics for their “effect of monumentality.”45 More importantly, Bennett notes
that towers, steeples, and bells were favoured by religious denominations that
had strong Church-State relations.46 The old convent spire, symbolic of power and
monumentality “stood proudly in the midst of Hamilton’s expansion in which it
acknowledge[d] participation because of the unbroken line of homemakers and
professional women who ... streamed through the Convent gates into the city’s
thoroughfares.”47
The material culture of the
chapel, the kitchen, dining rooms, and classrooms reveal how the personal
mobility of nuns, their religious identities, and their perceptions of
sexuality were inextricably linked to how they were allowed to utilize the
constructed space within the Loretto building(s). Bennett writes that
“the liturgical requirements of the Roman Catholic mass” and the daily offering
of the Eucharist required a fixed altar, and therefore contributed to
architectural differences between Roman Catholic and Protestant churches. To
Roman Catholics the chapel was, above all else, a place to worship and
therefore a private space. The chapel at Loretto Hamilton was initially
situated on the second floor, and was constructed to accommodate the Sisters’
requirement for daily Mass and the
reception of the Sacraments and Eucharist. Bishop Farrell had made clear in his
1865 letter to Mother Teresa Dease that he would provide the confessors and
priests to perform these duties. The chapel’s interior was simple and modestly
sized because nuns could not perform masses,48 reflecting again, the gender differences and relations
between the Sisters and the local priest. Only the priest, for example, would
have been allowed to wash the corporals, purifactors, and palls that were used
at Mass.49 The Sisters’ vow of poverty
would have precluded any unnecessary adornments within the chapel, convent, or
school. In addition, the chapel, from 1865 to 1872, would have been the only
meeting place at Mount St. Mary where the Sisters and the priest or Ordinary50 were allowed to meet, and when
they did meet the Sisters would have followed a code of conduct that mandated
modesty. The male authority figure, whether he be Ordinary, priest, physician,
or workman, was not permitted to walk around the convent without the
accompaniment of one of the Sisters.51
Men were to be allowed into the
house during “necessities”: to say Mass,52 to cure an ailing Sister or to repair buildings.
Religious men were forbidden to enter private or particular rooms, but only
common or public places – initially the workroom, infirmary and garden, and
later into the parlour and auditorium. Excepting their Confessors, the Sisters
were not allowed to speak alone to religious men “for many reasons” not
specified by the Constitutions of 1832. By 1861, however, the Constitutions
were relaxed in matters pertaining to male visitors. The Bishop could now visit
a house as often as he wished and thought proper. Each part of the house was to
be made available to him, and any Sister was permitted free access to him
during his visitation.
The
dining room of the original building (1865-1872) was situated on the main
floor, with the kitchen sited off from the chapel and bedrooms to easily
receive incoming supplies from the outer court.53 There are no references or
photographs to suggest that the Sisters had their own vegetable garden, engaged
in animal husbandry, or where the hearth and fire or storage area might have
been located. In other words, there is no evidence of economic self-sufficiency
at Mount St. Mary. In the school’s first few years, the teaching Sisters
themselves tended to the daily domestic work of the convent: provision of
meals, care of boarders, rooms, convent and school areas; laundry, and ordering
food supplies from the local butcher, grocer, and other merchants. As
enrollment soared and the number of courses multiplied, lay Sisters performed
the daily chores of the convent and school.
Throughout its history, 50 per
cent of the lay Sisters54
working as domestics at Loretto
Hamilton were of Irish or Scottish decent or Irish immigrants
themselves. In fact, between 1865 and 1900, all domestics (7) were either born
of Irish immigrants or were Irish immigrants (2).55
Catherine Kavanagh (1839-1869), born in Ireland, was the eldest to have
entered the Loretto house in 1868 at the age of 29. The youngest was Catherine
Kinsella (1853-1928), who entered at
the age of 15. The average age of those entering the Hamilton house was 23. Of
the domestics employed at Loretto before 1900, almost half had been born in
Hamilton. Sisters Martha, Lucy, and Bede tended to housekeeping duties in the
1880s while Sister Perpetua dusted the chapel and Sister Petrenella was
portress.56
The
entire charge of the lay Sisters was delegated to the Mistresses of the house
who ensured that their charges not only kept the house and grounds clean and in
order, but “observe[d] the silence, submission and retirement befitting their
state and occupations.”57
The values of the lay Sisters were slightly different from those of their choir
counterparts. They were to observe order, cleanliness, punctuality, be active,
obey and revere the teaching Sisters “because of their vocation.”58 Charge of the kitchen went to
the Dispenser whose duty it was to “prevent waste” in order to feed the poor
who often came to the gates, and front door59 of the Loretto house in Hamilton.60
There
was a large excess of young women over young men in the most marriageable age
groups.61 Widowhood between 1851 and 1871
formed a significant part of the life cycle for many women,62 and only 50 per cent of Irish
born Catholic women had married by their late twenties.63 It is not surprising then, that
working as domestics was a propitious alternative to being single for Irish
Catholic women and girls. Where previously domestics had been living in
extended households, by 1870 the nuclear household had become the norm. Forty
per cent of 15 to 17 year old Irish born Catholic women worked as domestics,
yet only 43 per cent of Irish born children aged 9 to 11 attended school,
compared to 87 per cent of Canadian-born Irish.64 At a time when Canadian
Protestants were sending more of their school age daughters to schools than
sons because of lack of suitable employment opportunities for their daughters,
Irish Catholic girls whose fathers were unskilled or semi-skilled labourers
were even less likely to attend school than were Irish Catholic boys.
Classrooms were indicative of
these class distinctions at Loretto Hamilton. From 1865 to 1892 the classrooms
were situated on the ground level. It was here that the students learned
English, poetry, elocution, piano and harp, vocal music, drawing and
watercolour painting, arithmetic, “terrestrial globes,” Latin, and French.
According to Bayley and Ronish, it was common in the mid-nineteenth century for
middle-class Catholics and non-Catholics in England to send their daughters to
“cheap and ladylike” convent schools to be taught “French culture and manners”
and Italian.65 In fact, sciences, classical
languages, and literature were taught to males and they were rewarded with
certificates and diplomas. Females, “lacking rigorous analytical thought,” were
restricted to studying music, art, and modern languages, and were awarded for
their “accomplishments”66
in these subjects. The result was the continuation of a stratified society that
limited access to the professions to males in the middle and upper
classes.
The Constitutions of 1861 reveal
that the Sisters were to endeavour to instill in the children’s minds a “spirit
of true and solid piety, both by word and example.” The Sisters were only to
speak to students during schools hours, and never to speak to them about the
affairs of the house, private affairs of other Sisters, or their confessors. If
a child could not be disciplined in their faults of “stubbornness, insincerity,
improper words or unbecoming levity,” she was to be expelled.67 By 1908, however, the Sisters
were instructed to instill the students with “the fear of God and of eternal
punishment and the hatred of sin.”68 Separate rules and admission criteria appear for the
first time in the 1908 Constitutions. Those “too stupid or slow to learn ...
[or who are] unwilling or unable to learn” must be dismissed.69
The
Sisters provided a good quality education in the arts, religion, discipline and
good manners. Mary Ward’s philosophy of education had incorporated three
ideals: academic excellence, devotion to the church and the perpetuation of the
virtues of womanhood. Academic excellence referred to the fullest development
of each student’s mental capacity. The more one truly developed one’s
intellectual powers, Ward believed, the more truly human one became. The
Catholic housewife, mother, nurse, teacher, doctor, or office-worker had to be
able to explain the principals of Christian doctrine according to the life she
lived. A Catholic woman had the freedom to do what she believed was right, and
it was her duty to be Christian and womanly, and therefore be a credit to
family, country, school and church. Honesty, integrity, and generosity formed
the foundation for the characteristically feminine qualities of modesty,
gentleness, compassion, and openness of heart. This balance between enforcing
strict discipline and providing comfort and guidance to the students was
characteristic of a Loretto education. Sister Victorine (1856-1911), for
example, had distinguishing qualities as a teacher and Superior whose “strong, womanly
penetration and common sense united with a most winning sweetness and simplicity
of manner.”70
By
1879 there were 30 boarders and 70 day scholars enrolled in six classes.
Physical education was introduced in the late 1880s, as Captain Clark of Guelph
visited the school on Thursday afternoon for calisthenics in the refectory:
There was hurrying and scurrying
to push back the desks and chairs to make the required space for the drills,
then at the sound of the approaching footsteps through the refectory, all was
silent to greet the general “good afternoon, girls” of the Captain.71
Eventually a gymnasium was built
in 1892 with the construction of the second wing. This concern with health and
exercise is evident in the 1908 Constitutions. Girls were to eat only
nourishing and well-cooked food. No “outside” food from parents was allowed.72 The Sisters believed there was
“health in movement, particularly in the open air. It was “unnatural” to have
the girls “sit too long and remain still.”73
The
Prize List of 1879 indicates that the curriculum was becoming more academically
rigorous with the inclusion of French conversational, dictation and composition
courses, English elocution, epistolatory, correspondence and literature,
German, Logic, Mathematics, Political Geography, Chemistry, Astronomy,
Geometry, Algebra, Botany, British and Canadian Geography, and school
philosophy was demanding the teaching of Christian doctrine. Three years later,
the Loretto School for Girls would witness the construction of additional
classrooms to accommodate the increasing the numbers of students and varied and
growing number of educational courses.
The
introduction of compulsory schooling in 1871, a change in curriculum whereby
education was now being provided to women and girls for preparation for a
career outside the home, and the great increase in the numbers of students
necessitated the construction of an additional wing. In 1892, a grand
five-storey auditorium wing was erected with a dormitory for boarders, dining
rooms, kitchen, sleeping rooms for the Sisters, a vast attic,74 and classrooms and music rooms,
as music, drama, and art were now offered in the curriculum. The Loretto
Sisters, limited by finances and space, had had to share the recreation rooms,
libraries, parlour, and most other rooms (excepting the dining rooms and
sleeping facilities) with the pupils, as the 1861 Constitutions indicate.
The 1965 Loretto Yearbook proudly
claimed that the 1892 auditorium housed “the finest Music Hall” in the city,
the only one with a permanent stage. The highlight of the new Loretto building
appears to have been the stage where “little beginners were first introduced to
the Crib of Bethlehem, to Santa Claus, to Toyland and to Fairyland.” Older
students learned to sing, dance, or recite on the stage. Public speaking,
debating, acting out Shakespearian tragedies and comedies, choral singing,
piano recitals, and other forms of “cultural training for the Senior girls”
occurred on the stage. The 1908 Constitutions, however, were also careful to
point out the dangers of dances and theatres and “devouring books of all
kinds.”75
Loretto,
in 1866, was primarily an institution that reproduced the manners and culture
of the ruling elite, even though many of its students were daughters of poor
Irish Protestant clergymen and entrepreneurs and not the ruling elite. In Upper
Canadian society, wealthy (and not so wealthy) parents invested in education. A
father’s occupation also mattered, independent of income. Gidney and Millar
found that schooling was a form of patrimony for children who would not or
could not inherit the family business.76 This reproduction in societal values was apparent during
the events that took place in the school auditorium. Prizes in amiability,
order, personal neatness, early rising, regular attendance, and good conduct
reflected the Victorian ideals, rituals, and manners of a dominant capitalist
and patriarchal society. In fact, convocations in the auditorium often provided
entertainment for local and visiting dignitaries: in 1866, two Bishops, a
Vicar-General, and many clergymen were in attendance for the distribution of
prizes day. Lacking an auditorium, a partition between the school room and
refectory were dismantled by the students and teachers in order to erect a
stage.77
By 1889, the content of
education had undergone considerable revision. In Hamilton’s Loretto Academy,
departmental courses of study were being taught in 1890. By 1894 a commercial
course was added, even though only a few students enrolled. Higher education
for girls was still a preparation for a cultured Christian home life, the
development of intellectual and artistic skills, of the domestic arts and the
matter of grace in manners and deportment. The idea that Canadian life would
soon provide a leisure class of its own, whose role in life would be social and
benevolent was dissolving with newer ambitions. Education would be expected to
equip young girls as well as boys for making their own livelihood. These
changes in education brought about the construction of a wing in 1892.
The
period from 1870 to 1900 also witnessed a tremendous amount of school building
activity around the old St. Mary’s Cathedral, necessitated by the introduction
of compulsory schooling and increased immigration. In 1871, Bishop Crinnon had
opened the new Model School. This school was later known as Sacred Heart and
subsequently, St. Mary’s Girls’ School. As Patrick Brennan notes, this school
was the beginning of an organized approach by the Catholic school system to
providing Catholic secondary education for boys and girls in Hamilton until
1912 with the erection of Cathedral, an all girls’ secondary school that
specialized in commercial courses.78
The
early years of the twentieth-century were difficult for the Loretto Academy. In
1906, financial difficulties forced the Sisters to sell part of the property
along Ray Street, resulting in over crowding so that a temporary science room
that had been set up adjacent to the dormitory was moved to the parlour section
of the academy. Benefactors contributed $250 towards the expense of this
improvement.
