118 THEISLAND ACADIANS

French. As a result, any teacher who obtained the appropriate qualifi- cation was entitled to receive a salary increment of 5 pounds from the government, providing the school district matched the sum*'.

Despite complaints to the Board of Education, textbooks with a religious content were used in the Acadian schools until 1877. The situation was tolerated for a long time merely because appropriate French textbooks without a religious content were not available in Canada**. This fact exemplifies, once again, the link between language and faith.

The problems encountered by Acadian schools related, as we have seen, not only to the language of instruction and the training of teachers, but also to religion. As stated earlier, the debate concerning religious instruction in schools divided the province for quite some time. The School Act of 1877 settled the matter to the extent that public schools were to be non-confessional and textbooks standard- ized. The French books being used in the Acadian schools were thus removed. However, the Act left the whole issue of French-language education unresolved.

The School Act of 1877 could hardly leave Bishop Peter McIntyre indifferent. In fact, he organized an extensive campaign to defend the rights of Acadian schools. According to his interpretation of previous school acts, Acadian schools were legally entitled to teach the Catholic religion and the French language. In other words, Acadian schools were separate schools. Thus, in Monseigneur MclIntyre’s opinion, the School Act of 1877 contradicted the British North America Act which protected the educational rights which Catholic Islanders acquired before the Island entered Confederation in 1873.

The bishop personally took numerous steps to protest the School Act. He also urged Acadians to petition Ottawa in order to demand justice; in addition he asked them to contest the law by keeping their schools closed. The Acadians followed their bishop’s recommendations and began boycotting public schools. But it was a lost cause: the Island government succeeded very quickly in proving that the School Acts, especially after 1863, placed Acadian schools on the same footing as all the other public schools in the province’. The only concession the Acadians gained by their action was that they obtained a series of bilingual readers. This success was very relative, however. Inspector William McPhail approved of these readers because they made it easier to translate or, in other words, to learn English **.