This petition is one of 24 submitted in April 1871 to oppose the new Education Act passed in New Brunswick. It bore witness to the issues that tore the province apart from 1871 to 1875, during what was the first of many “education crises” to affect French-speaking minority communities in Canada.

Prior to its entry into Canadian Confederation in 1867, the colony of New Brunswick had no formal school system. Schools did exist, but they were local, organized by groups of parents with the support of parishes or local churches. Parents had to pay for their children’s tuition, but the province did provide occasional grants to subsidize costs.

When the new province decided to create a coherent school system around 1870, it found two models in other provinces. On the one hand, Ontario and Nova Scotia had each established, in 1846 and 1864 respectively, a single network of “common schools” – that is, schools unaffiliated with any religious denomination. Only these schools were eligible for state subsidies. On the other hand, Quebec had seen the development of a denominational educational system in which the Protestant minority was entitled to separate schools and its own school trustees.

The British North America Act (BNAA), which founded Canada in 1867, extended the “separate schools” principle to Ontario, offering constitutional protection to Catholic schools in that province. However, the wording adopted meant that no such recognition was granted to Catholics in the Maritime provinces.

With its Common Schools Act of 1871, the New Brunswick government of George King opted for the non-denominational model. Yet there existed a sizeable Catholic minority in the province, one made up of Acadian and Irish communities.

The petition presented here testifies to this minority’s strong opposition. Also, it demonstrates that these communities, despite their relative isolation from political life, had spokespersons who were well aware of the education sections of the BNA Act. This was why they were calling on the federal government to stand up for the minority and disavow the new provincial law.