CCHA Historical
Studies, 71 (2005), 79-93
Faithful Companions of Jesus in the Field of Education in Brandon,
Manitoba,
1883-1895
Sheila
ROSS
In
October 1883, five members the Sisters, Faithful Companions of Jesus, travelled to Brandon, Manitoba, invited by Archbishop A. A. Taché, OMI, to establish a foundation in the
Archdiocese of St. Boniface. Their
reputation as trail-blazing educators preceded them - two convents had been
opened in the Diocese of St. Albert in June of the same year, part of an Oblate
network of services to insure the transmission of Catholic values, culture, and
education in the Northwest.[1] Although the arrival of the sisters
signalled a desire of the congregation to further extend its mission, their
stay in Brandon was an uphill struggle that lasted little more than ten
years. An examination of their work in
education reveals anti-Catholic sentiment in Brandon that was helping to fuel
the flames of a larger battle being fought throughout Manitoba as the rights of
Catholics to a denominational education were called into question.
In
his recent biography of Archbishop Taché, Raymond Huel provides an
historiographical framework for a study of women religious working for the
Catholic Church in Manitoba during the latter part of the nineteenth century.[2] He
outlines the history of linguistic and school privileges granted to French and
Catholic settlers in Manitoba, noting that Taché was actively involved in the
establishment of Manitoba’s denominational school system. Taché was also instrumental in securing
those same privileges in the Manitoba Act of 1870. By the beginning of the 1880s, however, his vision for the
Northwest had to be revised because immigration had reduced the French and Catholic
element to a minority status.[3] While there had not been a challenge to
school privileges, Taché had detected an explosive issue, and was concerned
about the future of Catholic education in Manitoba.
Huel
relates that as the population of Manitoba increased and spread, Taché secured
the services of female teaching congregations for the missions he had
established in his archdiocese.[4] He became acquainted with the Faithful
Companions of Jesus (FCJ) through Vital Grandin, OMI, Bishop of St. Albert,
when earlier recruits stopped to rest and visit with the Sisters of Charity in
St. Boniface before going to Oblate mission schools in Saskatchewan at St.
Laurent and Prince Albert. A French
congregation with convents in England and Ireland, the FCJs were founded by
Marie Madeleine Victoire de Bengy, Viscountess de Bonnault d’Houet (1781-1858),
a young widow who was motivated by a strong religious impulse to carry out work
of various kinds among the poor. In
1820, after managing her late husband’s estate for several years, Madeleine
d’Houet decided that rather than re-marry, she was called to establish a
society for the education of children, training them to lead useful, edifying
Christian lives.[5] She
patterned her Constitution after the Jesuits who taught at St.
Acheul, her son’s college in Amiens, and consequently became interested in
missionary endeavors.[6]
FCJ
was one of hundreds of service-oriented congregations established throughout
the Catholic world during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that were for
the most part responses to the evangelicalism of the time and the social
dislocation that was resulting from wholesale economic change on the continent.[7]
It was a central organization, with control exercised by a Superior-General
rather than by a bishop who extended an invitation to reside in a diocese. Centralized
congregations were not, as a rule, very popular with bishops. Some were fearful of administrative problems
or overly conscious of their own authority while others objected in principle.[8]
Notwithstanding these potential difficulties, Archbishop Taché had been so impressed with the sisters’ teaching
credentials, as well as with their fluency in English and French, that he asked
Bishop Grandin to consider letting some of them stay in St. Boniface Archdiocese. When Grandin replied that he had not
shepherded them thousands of miles only to lose them at the end of the line, Taché wrote to Superior-General Josephine Petit at the
motherhouse in Ste. Anne d’Auray, in Morbihan, asking her to send three or four
sisters immediately, and said they should be prepared to teach English, French
and piano. He added: “Our country is in
a state of formation. Protestantism is
making a huge effort to take over everywhere, help me please, to resist this
invasion and God will bless you.”[9]
According
to Taché, Brandon was already supplied with Anglican, Baptist, Methodist and
Presbyterian churches and ministers who were “quite unfavorable to Catholics.”[10]
For the most part, Protestants from Ontario had settled in the rising
market-centre railway city, located south and west of Winnipeg on the
Assiniboine River. Taché opened a
mission in Brandon the year it was incorporated, in 1882, and a small church,
astutely dedicated to St. Augustine of Canterbury, was built in 1882. That winter a Catholic School Board was
established, in compliance with the Manitoba School Act that called for
distinct Catholic and Protestant districts. In order to attract a teaching congregation, a grey three-storey
frame convent with a mansard roof was constructed in 1883. It was a notable Catholic presence in
Brandon.[11] When the
Archbishop blessed its bells on the Sunday before the sisters arrived, he spoke
glowingly of them to a gathering of Catholics and Protestants who welcomed the
prospect of a superior education for their children.[12]
Women
religious were highly valued workers for several reasons. They embodied Catholic values, cost little
in the way of salaries, and sought no personal gain, accepting one of the
ideals of nineteenth century religious life: total abnegation of the self.[13]
Most importantly, they were willing to work within the confines of a
patriarchal setting while expanding their religious activities. At the request of Father Robillard, the
parish priest, the sisters opened a day school and a boarding school
(traditionally, a long-term means of support) in St. Joseph’s Convent within a
week of arriving, on 8 October. A
program of reading, grammar, geography, arithmetic, French, sacred history,
catechism and singing was taught, patterned after the select FCJ convents in
France, England and Ireland.
China-painting, stenography, needlework, lace artistry, embroidery and
cut-work were also offered by the sisters.
According to Lucille Hochstein, FCJ, secular, moral and religious
instruction made up the curriculum of all FCJ convents.[14]
Needlework was regarded as good moral training and proficiency at knitting and
sewing was considered valuable training for the frugal, thrifty lives which
girls might be called upon to lead as wives and mothers. FCJ convents in Europe were highly valued for
turning out “ladies.” They promised to
provide the broad educational background that enabled the daughters of
prosperous Catholics to take their place in society as cultured, poised and
essentially feminine women.[15]
Irish author Kate O’Brien, writing about her days at Laurel Hill Convent, in
Limerick City, recalled the almost fanatical instruction in behavior, on the
obligation of a lady to move quietly, to hold her back straight, to open and
close doors correctly and to sit still.[16]
Although
the FCJs preferred to operate all-girl schools, several boys were among the
fifteen students enrolled at the convent for the first term, a gesture of
adaptability as older boys, in particular, were not usually taught by women
religious. The sisters related that the
Catholic students were, for the most part, of Irish descent.[17]
Two of the girls were Protestant, daughters of Brandon’s sheriff, Stephen
Clement, whose wife was from Ireland.
The first boarder arrived within a week, a Protestant girl from
California. Archbishop Taché inspected
the school on 7 November and promised more space in the building as needed,
referring to a chapel that occupied the entire floor of the convent and was
used for Mass on Sundays because the Catholic population had outgrown the
church.[18]
“Brandon House”
circa 1883
Archbishop
Taché’s dealings with the FCJs were paternalistic and authoritarian, but
kindly.[19]
When the sisters first met with him, he cautioned them not to injure their
health by deprivation and to write to their “grandfather” if they lacked
anything.[20] Mother
Augustine Rees, the Superior of the convent, did contact him when Father
Robillard threatened to report her to the Superior-General for disputing his
decisions about the amount of fuel needed to heat the convent, resulting in
Taché’s intervention on behalf of the sisters.[21]
Yet, the sisters carefully maintained good relations with all and sundry, as
such diplomacy enabled them to flourish.
For example, they willingly provided weekly religious training for
Catholic children who attended the public school, realizing that the convent
school was the anchor for parish life and activity.[22]
And, true to his word, Taché insisted that Father Robillard vacate the chapel
the following summer, adding two classrooms to the convent for the 1884
term. When classes resumed, Taché
visited the convent school and presided over a ceremony that received the first
Brandon postulant, an eighteen year old French-Canadian, Josephine Plante, on 8
September. She was a welcome addition,
as vocations were necessary to staff and maintain any new foundation.[23]
Brandon’s
first public (or Protestant) school had opened in 1882, constructed with funds
secured when city council issued debentures on behalf of the Protestant School
Board. In a study of early schooling in
Brandon, Tom Mitchell notes that school board members were almost exclusively
from Ontario and engaged only those teachers who “were fit to shape” the moral
and intellectual character of children, reflecting a preoccupation of Ontario’s
schools with the role of teaching in the development of character. The public school had a capacity of three
hundred; in June of 1884 there were four hundred and thirty-five children
enrolled, as compared to fifty at the convent.[24]
During the early 1880s, relations between
Catholics and Protestants were pleasant and differences were respected. In 1882 the Brandon Mail observed that Catholic Christmas services were well
attended by Protestants and Catholics.
It praised Catholics for their unity, zeal, generosity and “lively faith
which has induced them, although low in number, to build at once a chapel and
pay a liberal support to their pastor.”[25] In 1883 the Mail noted the sisters were hosting a Christmas party for pupils
during the holiday, and that Father Robillard’s services were so pleasing that
he made numerous friends in Protestant denominations.[26] The same priest assembled an
inter-denominational choir in 1885. Ten
men and women joined and Mother Melanie Quinn directed – one Baptist, two
Methodists, one Presbyterian, two other Protestants, two Catholics and two
sisters - all trained in singing. The
musicians participated in Midnight Mass, publicly announced and pronounced a
success, according to the Annals.[27] With
over-crowding an issue at the public school and younger children attending only
half days, there appeared to be little concern that many Protestant parents
preferred the education given by the sisters, especially with music and French
available at the convent but not at the public school.[28]
Indeed, the editor of the Brandon Sun,
W. J. White, a member of the Protestant School Board, praised the “intellectual
training” afforded at the convent.[29]
The ecumenical climate particular to Brandon
decreased with time as its population increased. In 1884, the sisters recorded that three of the
convent children made their First Holy Communion and that their parents made
their utmost effort to be present at the ceremony: “for here, in consequence of
their difficult position it is not usual to see the father and mother together
at Church, even on Holy Days of Obligation.”[30]
The perception of a possible reluctance by some parents to be seen attending
Catholic celebrations was due to the increasingly Protestant character of
Brandon. According to Mitchell,
Brandon’s Ontario-bred Protestants were determined to re-create Ontario’s
institutions in Brandon. Their
churches were allied with organizations such as the Brandon chapters of the
Women’s Christian Temperance Union and the Young Men’s Christian Association,
the latter operating a reading room, holding noon-hour prayer meetings,
visiting the prison, sponsoring debates and finding jobs for the unemployed.[31]
Certainly, the public school was, in fact, the Protestant school – it operated
on a non-denominational basis, and by
law was the responsibility of the Protestant School Board. Mitchell contends that while separate
schools accommodated the distinctive needs of Manitoba’s Catholics, it was
Ontario’s non-sectarian public schools that “reflected an emerging consensus
among the province’s English-speaking Protestant population that a system of
non-denominational, free public schools was essential to the progress and
stability of the Province.”[32]
Mitchell argues that Brandon’s Protestant
population did not have an antagonistic attitude toward the province’s dual
school system until the Protestant School Board faced an increasingly difficult
financial situation in the mid-1880s.[33] Both the convent school and the public
school were financed by provincial grants and local taxes levied on
taxpayers. Protestants attending the
convent paid one dollar a month as Protestants, and by law, did not support
Catholic schools through taxation.
While the Protestant School Board experienced financial difficulties
because of provincial cutbacks, the Catholic Board fared better – with fewer
costs, women religious working for low salaries and with Protestants paying a
fee. At the same time, the Protestant
Board was faced with cutting teachers’ salaries and looking for ways to pay
outstanding construction debts acquired because an economic downturn made it
difficult to secure funds at a municipal level.[34]
Was it any wonder that eyebrows were raised, in 1887, when members of the
Protestant School Board and ministers of the Protestant churches realized that
ninety-seven of the one hundred and ten pupils attending the Catholic school
were Protestant?
Understandably, the Protestant Board sought
to reverse the trend. The sisters
related a sudden withdrawal of four older Protestant boys within a month of the
arrival of the Salvation Army, in March of that year, quite a loss as few
advanced students were enrolled at the convent.[35]
Then, discord was increased by three seemingly unrelated incidents. In mid-June,
Methodist ministers from across the country convened in Brandon. Learning that
so many of theirs were attending a Catholic school, they protested in
public and private, warning parents that sooner or later they would regret
having entrusted their children to the sisters, telling them, among other
things, that faith and morals would be quickly lost.[36]
About the same time, one of the older convent students, Emma Clement, decided
not only to become a Catholic, but to enter the novitiate. The sisters claimed that her announcement
came as a surprise, that in fact she had been unhappy with her situation when
she arrived, and “voiced her unhappiness” in no uncertain terms, often testing
their patience.[37] However, Emma’s father, “a gentleman who had
always professed the highest esteem for us, and who had always acted as a true
friend of our house, a very rare thing, alas, in this country,” attributed
Emma’s “little project” to undue influence.[38] Adding insult to injury, he withdrew his
five children from the school.[39]
The
sudden departure of Emma under such circumstances caused quite a stir in
Brandon, according to the sisters, who experienced “sorrow, disappointment, and
embarrassment.”[40] Then, to support these attacks, Reverend
Charles Chiniquy, an ex-priest who had become became a Presbyterian minister,
arrived in Brandon. It is not clear
whether he was invited or simply passing through on a speaking tour.[41]
Chiniquy was quick to describe “any convent as a den of all that is bad and
corrupted.”[42]
Previously unpopular, Chiniquy’s views were now beginning to find favour with
many local parents. With the re-opening of classes on 18 August, only
fifty-two children registered; where there had been twelve boarders before the
holidays, only six had returned to the convent.
Looking to recover the congregation’s
fortunes, the FCJ Superior-General appointed Irish-born Mother Philomena
Higgins as Superior in Brandon, replacing Mother Augustine, who chose to return
to England rather than remain in the mission.
Mother Philomena, who would serve as Superior-General from 1914 until
her death in 1947, had arrived in Brandon a year earlier, in 1886, after
teaching in the missions at St. Laurent and Calgary for three years. She was born Frances Ann Higgins in 1857 at
Liscannor, within sight of the great Cliffs of Moher. She had entered the FCJ novitiate from the Limerick City convent
at the age of sixteen. She proved to be
adept in languages, easily mastering French and German in her years of
formation in France, a talent that would be invaluable in her work with the
immigrant population in the Northwest.[43]
Women who headed convents in the
late-nineteenth century, especially newer foundations, were chosen for their
strength and negotiating ability because
they were frequently moved from one setting to another as the need arose and typically encountered many diverse
work and learning experiences in a variety of situations.[44]
While FCJ Superiors were normally at least forty years of age, Mother Philomena was barely thirty in
1887. Nonetheless she was expected to carry the full burden of decision-making
in a relatively new mission with all the dexterity of a more seasoned
administrator. She had already developed solid and lasting
bonds of friendship with other congregations in Manitoba, dating from when
Bishop Grandin told his recruits that in Canada the different religious orders
contacted each other “in order to share the good to be done.”[45] While staying with the Sisters of Charity in
St. Boniface in 1883, she had visited Winnipeg’s Convent of the Holy Name where
she admired its curriculum that gave equal attention to both the English and
French languages. [46] Higgins’ closest confidante, though, was the
Superior-General, affectionately called Notre
Mere, who imbued in her “daughters” the spirit of their foundress,
Madeleine d’Houet, and her mandate that
each foundation keep the deposit of their traditions intact and unchanged.[47]
According to the sisters, the convents in far away countries were as near to
the Superior-General as the rest, as she was able to dispense advice – about
everything from suggesting remedies for illnesses to upgrading diplomas and managing the
convents – through a constant exchange of letters.[48]
Mother
Philomena quickly tackled the financial problems that were looming over the
convent, beginning with a budget that was already close to the bone. She suggested that Catholic taxpayers should
be willing to pay tuition, a concern for the parish priest, who was aware of the
financial circumstances of his parishioners.
When Mother Philomena stood her ground, he went to Archbishop Taché with a list of the children enrolled,
marking off those who were too poor to pay, those who could pay, and those who
had parents paying taxes to the school.[49]
An entrance fee of five dollars was decided upon. Shortly thereafter, the North
West Review published promotional ads for the convent. Board and tuition for a term were twelve
dollars a month, with a deduction for two or more students in a family. Music was three dollars a month for
instrumental lessons, one dollar for vocal instruction, and five dollars for
private singing lessons. Drawing
lessons were one dollar a month; painting and illuminating were five dollars a
month. Payments were to be made two
months in advance. Pupils coming from
other institutions needed a certificate of good conduct from the establishment
they left.[50]
As a religious in a diocese, Mother Philomena
was automatically entitled to a certain amount of respect from bishops, priests
and lay Catholics. For the most part,
she was treated with deference, and worked side by side with authorities both
ecclesiastical and civil. When the Brandon Sun implied that the convent was
receiving education grants it did not deserve, saying that five teachers taught
an average of twenty children at the convent, she turned to Archbishop Taché,
who responded by way of a letter published in the North West Review. He
corrected inaccuracies, demonstrating that there were eighty-seven children
enrolled, with three sisters on staff, and another teaching music, ornamental
drawing, painting, embroidery and fancy needlework for “young ladies of refined
dispositions.”[51] In turn,
when the archbishop asked the sisters to join with the other religions in
January 1890 by preparing a program
of musical and dramatic entertainment in aid of the Brandon hospital, they
questioned the time involved in such a project, but agreed to participate.[52]
They understood that a visible contribution serving a community need would help
to alleviate Protestant suspicion and prejudice. It was a clever move, and a Brandon
Times reporter touring the convent later that month, in view of the earlier
attacks concerning grants by the Sun,
assured readers that religious instruction was not imparted until 3:30 p.m.,
when one half-hour of religion was offered only to the Catholic students.[53]
He continued:
They teach English,
including grammar, composition, reading with geography, Miles Canadian History
and bookkeeping as well as French, which is free for all who want it. Also Object lessons and elementary
science. Singing lessons: half hour a
week; all can take part. Girls take
sewing and boys take linear drawing.
The convent is in a healthy portion of one of the healthiest centres in
the country. It is scrupulously clean
and neat. The dormitory has twelve iron
cots, excellent mattresses. There are
at present twelve boarders, but will be more in good weather. Amount received from government in 1888,
$295.30; 1889, $425.50. Fees: boarders
$12 a month; music, two lessons a week, $1 a month. Outsiders $1 extra. Music
room has Heintzmann and Newcombe piano.[54]
Nonetheless, the growing
anti-Catholic bias in Brandon continued to take its toll. Attendance at the convent dropped again that
term, to eighty-two children, fifty-nine girls and twenty-three boys, with the
sisters admitting they had to strain every nerve to make ends meet.[55]
When
the Greenway government abolished dual and denominational school systems as
well as a second language instruction in Manitoba in March of 1890, Brandon
parents faced the prospect of paying twice for a child’s education: once in
compulsory public school taxes and again in tuition to privately supported
Catholic schools.[56] Undaunted, Archbishop Taché called upon
Manitoba Catholics to bear the burden necessary to ensure that their children
received a Catholic education. In
Brandon, a meeting was held on 30 April in St. Augustine’s to protest against
another article in the Sun saying that Catholics did not want
separate schools.[57] And, displaying a full measure of optimism,
the sisters borrowed money to buy a lot behind the convent, adding “Nazareth
Cottage.” The new building had a
spacious kitchen, a pastry shop for home economics, a refectory, bathrooms,
cellars and hot water heat, at last a place with even and warm temperatures,
they related.[58] Whereas in
September 1890 there were ninety children enrolled, with seventy listed as
Catholic, in 1892 there were one hundred and eighteen children enrolled at the
convent, and almost all were Catholic.
Writing to Mother Philomena, Archbishop Taché remarked: “It is to me a
great consolation to see that the storm raised against our schools, especially
against that of Brandon has failed to injure it.”[59]
It
was the opinion of many in Brandon, the Mail’s
editor included, that the government had interfered with some rights or
privileges the Roman Catholics had been granted at Confederation.[60] Charles Cliffe suggested that a compromise
could be in order, even a modification of the Act.[61]
At the same time, he set out the Mail’s
policy, stating:
We would like to see all vestige of
sectarianism abolished in our schools and the systems reduced to one general
system having secular education alone in view, leaving to the churches and
clergy the inculcation of those religious views denominations seem to think
necessary in the country: individual wish and individual opinion have nothing
to do with the question.[62]
When the Privy Council
determined, as a matter of law, that no injustice had been done the minority,
the Mail quickly pronounced itself
the voice of Protestants in Brandon, declaring:
Catholic children are
entitled to secular education, but certainly not religious education; if the
Roman Catholics will not submit to a system of schools that separates them, the
fault is theirs not that of the Protestants. [63]
When Catholics in Manitoba
contended that under the guise of public schools, Protestant schools were
continued, Cliffe argued:
We hold that so long as any
form of religious instruction is observed in the Manitoba schools, and as long
as text books, especially histories, are used that embody a religious bias they
have a right to complain; but with those grounds for complaint removed they
must be induced to submit.[64]
Brandon
continued to become more and more Protestant, almost anti-Catholic, so much so
that “anyone known to be Catholic had a hard time getting a job.”[65]
According to the 1891 census, Brandon’s
population was overwhelmingly Protestant (more than ninety-three percent) while
Catholics represented less than six percent of its residents.[66]
Catholic parents were, more often than not, unable to pay tuition at the
convent and chose public education for their children. Because Mother Philomena had little success
when she had approached the clergy for loans,[67]to
supplement their dwindling income, the sisters solicited contracts from
Brandon’s Mayor-elect James Smart, who was a proponent of common schools, to artistically decorate speeches that
were presented to prominent visitors by the citizens.[68]
One instance indicates a fair amount of bias on their part as they decorated a
scroll for General Booth of Salvation Army renown. They related:
We could not afford to have
conscientious scruples. So, with a
fairly nice painting of the Infant Jesus (not our very best one, be it
understood) on the outside, and many a golden flourish round the great
General’s initials on the inside, we sent the address, in a rather mercenary
spirit we confess, on its mission and ... well ... we were paid for it![69]
Historically, the
congregation was rather practical in economic matters; choosing not to face
deterioration, the Superiors-General moved the sisters to another
location. When Madeline d’Houet had
settled her sisters in Ireland, for instance, she used her own resources to
move them from Oughterarde in County Galway to Limerick City after one year, when she realized that the
possibilities of boarders and future vocations would be at a minimum in
Oughterarde.[70] In the Canadian missions, although the sisters had gone from St.
Laurent to Calgary for a safer location, they had also relocated because a boarding school was not going to
be sustainable at the St. Laurent de Grandin mission. When Mother Philomena, who had been appointed Canadian Provincial
in 1893, met with the Superior-General Marie de Bussey in France during
the summer of 1894, she learned that the congregation had been offered several
secure contracts from American bishops to teach in parochial schools. The
FCJs wanted to make inroads in the United States and did not have
English-speaking sisters available so Mother Philomena was asked to consider
closing the Canadian foundation “doing the least for souls.”[71]
Mother Philomena was reluctant to leave
Brandon, where she had been Superior for eight years. She decided to persevere as long as it was “practicable,” adding
“things might mend; bigotry has done its worst, and has tried to turn us out.”[72]
She admitted that Protestants drew aside from them “lest they should be
contaminated,” even though the sisters had taught many of their children.[73]
On occasion, the children, sometimes along with their mothers, had taunted the
sisters as they walked along the streets, their distinctive clothing eliciting
a range of fantasies.[74] On the other hand, four young women had
entered religious life from Brandon and two sisters were buried from the
convent. In a bid to gain another firm
foot hold in the Archdiocese of St. Boniface, she had opened another convent at
Rat Portage, in Lake of the Woods country, in 1892.[75]
Furthermore, negotiations were also beginning for a foundation even further
east, in Quebec, in response to a need to settle French-speaking sisters who
were not suited to a frontier life but needed to avoid persecution in France.[76]
Mother
Philomena knew that dependence on the Protestant population in order to make
the convent self-sustaining had been a problem in common for the sisters in
Prince Albert and in Brandon. In January 1895 she agreed to have her
sisters teach at the Industrial School at Duck Lake, in the Prince Albert area.[77]
The sisters in Lethbridge had earlier considered closing their school because
of staffing problems, but thus far, the Superior-General had listened to Bishop
Grandin’s urgent pleas for a convent in the southern Alberta town. The sisters in Edmonton were well settled
and teaching in nearby Strathcona. And,
Calgary’s Sacred Heart Convent housed the “principal” school in the Northwest
Territories, with Bishop Grandin planning to open a Catholic Normal School in
the Calgary convent.[78]
Although she was bound by the dictates of
her Superior, Mother Philomena was not completely subordinate to those of the
Archbishop of St. Boniface, Adélard Langevin, OMI. Her relations with Langevin were cordial – she had represented
the congregation at his recent consecration.
Like his predecessor, he was deeply concerned about Catholic education
but, unlike his predecessor, he had not yet acquired a personal interest in or
attachment to the Brandon institution.
He appeared to have been caught off-guard, expressed surprise, a certain
degree of bewilderment, and said he was “deeply depressed” on learning that,
with few Catholics attending and enrolment down to thirty, Mother Philomena had
abruptly decided to close the convent at the end of the school term.[79]
By
the mid-1890s the demographic imbalance between Catholics and Protestants,
coupled with the relentless anti-Catholicism levelled at the sisters had
succeeded in marginalizing St. Joseph’s Convent in Brandon, rendering it unable
to sustain itself and causing the mission to fail. And
the opposition of Protestants to Catholic schooling in Brandon was clearly
symptomatic of the controversy over educational rights taking place throughout
Manitoba.[80] Preoccupied
with Taché’s larger struggle with the consequences of legislation on language
and educational rights of minorities, Archbishop Langevin, unwittingly allowed
an important English language Catholic school to slip though his hands, as
Mother Philomena Higgins opted for new and more lucrative opportunities in Fond
du Lac, Wisconsin.