Bishop Anderson and his
sister, who arrived in Red River in 1849, were instrumental in forming a
reading club for mutual improvement, for which the leading magazines
were ordered.
EDUCATION.
But we must now speak of more decided organization for the promotion of
culture in Red River. The Selkirk settlers had now (1821) gained a
footing in the land and the banks of the Red River had become the
paradise of retired officers of the fur-trading companies. Happy
families were growing up in the homes of the Settlement and education
was necessary. A settled community made it possible for the churches and
church societies in the homeland to do Christian work, both among the
Indians and the white people, and to these institutions the Settlement
was indebted for the first educational efforts made.
COMMON SCHOOLS.
The Rev. John West, the first Episcopal missionary who arrived, in 1820,
and his successors, the Rev. David Jones and Archdeacon Cochrane, as far
as they could, organized common schools on the parochial system. A
visitor to the Settlement in 1854, John Ryerson, says that there were
then eight common schools in the country--five of them wholly, or in
part, supported by the Church Missionary Society, two of them depending
on the bishop's individual bounty, and one only, that attached to the
Presbyterian congregation, depending on the fees of the pupils for
support.
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