122 THEISLAND ACADIANS

From the time it opened, the convent was not limited to Acadian girls only, although they did form the majority of the pupils. In fact, the convent also accepted girls whose parents were Irish, Scottish or English; several pupils were Protestant. In 1866, there were approxi- mately ninety pupils attending the convent classes which included English, French, Geography, History, Education, Grammar, plus Music and Embroidery™. In addition to girls from the parish, the convent also took in resident pupils from elsewhere, even from New Brunswick. There were twenty-five boarders in March of 1871: sixteen Acadians and nine English-speaking girls of whom three were Protestant*’.

The survival of the convent was dependent on continued public support. Consequently, the parishioners often organized large picnics (the ultimate fundraising event) and individuals made donations on a regular basis. For example, Father Sylvain Ephrem Poirier, the parish priest for Mont Carmel, donated a pig to the convent in 1871 and 1872°%°. The school itself relied on tuition fees since it was not entitled to government grants. But according to the Summerside Progress, the sisters were having a hard time supporting their convent in 1868 because many of the sixty pupils enrolled could not afford to pay all their school fees. It was thanks to the contributions of benefactors like Fathers Quévillon and Miville that the sisters were able to accept children from poor families at no charge or for reduced fees>’.

In all the institutions of the time, the examination of the pupils in public constituted a great event that everybody would attend, including the clergy and notables from the village. The following passage from the Moniteur Acadien gives a very picturesque account of the ceremony and an idea of the subjects studied by pupils in 1869:

The convent rooms not being large enough to hold the many friends of edu- cation at the convent, an outdoor stage was constructed with a bower of fir branches overhead that gave if not a most picturesque setting, at least a most pleasant one. At the outset, the scene was made even more beautiful and more graceful with the pupils dressed in white, the picture of innocence, standing in rows behind the stage. The programme was arranged so as to mix the serious parts of the examination with different pieces of music and singing, along with dialogues and plays, with the result that the audience could spend some very enjoyable moments.

The pupils were questioned seriously by the members of the clergy not only on English and French Reading, Translation, Geography, English and French Grammar, Arithmetic, but also on the higher branches of learning, Rhetoric,