The Post-War Period 245

in Education given in French’’. The Saint Thomas Aquinas Society continued other projects which included setting up French libraries in the Acadian schools, making financial contributions for the French competitions and buying a subscription to the newspaper L’Evangéline for every Acadian school.

The directors of the Society also discussed the possibility of founding a central French school at the secondary level that would alleviate the shortage of French language educational facilities. The aim was to attract boys since there were very few in the higher grades’®. This particular project did not come to complete fruition, but it did lead to the creation in 1960 of the Evangeline Regional High School in Abram’s Village. Thanks to the initiative of Father Jean-Francois Buote, Euclide Arsenault and Ulric Poirier and supported by numerous educators, the Acadian school districts in the parishes of Mont Carmel, Egmont Bay and Wellington rallied together to build one of the first regional secondary schools on the Island. A French atmosphere pre- vailed in the school, located in a homogeneous region. The regular English curriculum set by the Department of Education was taught along with additional courses in French Grammar and Literature. Administrative and school activities took place almost entirely in French.

The direction of the school and part of the teaching load was entrusted to teaching sisters from the Acadian religious order, Notre- Dame du Sacré-Coeur in Moncton. They had come to the Island the previous year to teach in several of the schools in the Evangeline District. The sisters were asked specifically to promote French and the Christian spirit, a mission they carried out in Prince Edward Island for almost twenty years’’.

Outside the Evangeline Region, Acadian students attended vari- ous high schools which were established after 1960. Obviously English dominated in these schools and French was only taught as a second language.

An important step in teacher training was taken in 1959 when scholarships were made available for Acadian students from the Island to attend the normal school, Notre-Dame-des-Flots, on the Magdalen Islands. This represented an historic event because it was the first time future teachers from Acadian communities on Prince Edward Island could take Education courses entirely in French. The school