By 1940 she, Father M.J. Smith, Pastor, and four school
trustees, Earl Duffy, John Keefe, John R. McCabe and EL.
Morris, had plans to expand the Kinkora school to include
the third year of high school, grade eleven.9 At the time
grade eleven was available in only three urban centres in
P.E.I.: Charlottetown, Summerside and Montague. Costs
associated with sending students to these places were con—
sidered an obstacle to many students pursuing further
education. But expanding, as Sister Mary Henry recalled,
“was a fight all the way?’ There was opposition within the
Kinkora School District from those who feared an increase
in school taxes. The P.E.I. Department of Education op-
posed it because Kinkora was considered too small to war—
rant a senior high school. In fact, the enrollment in Kinkora
school in 1939—40 was only eighty-five students, of whom
fifteen were from outside the district3° The P.E.I. govern—
ment was not willing to help finance the construction of
a new school in the midst of a continuing depression. Two
other controversies intensified this “fight? At one of the
meetings between a delegation from Kinkora and members
of the RBI. (Liberal) government, one of the government
members chided the delegates for being “all Conservatives?
The suspicion was raised that Kinkora’s long standing
reputation as a loyal Conservative constituency would be
held against it. That reputation had in fact just recent-
ly been confirmed in the federal election of 1940, in which
the Liberals swept up 177 seats, including all four seats in
P.E.I., to the Conservative’s 39 seat total; yet Kinkora and
Newton gave majorities to the Conservative candidate, Dr.
John A. McPhee, a former resident doctor in Kinkora]1
More troubling was the other perception by many in
Kinkora, that the lack of cooperation by the officials in the
Department of Education, who were mostly Protestants,
was a continuation of the old Catholic—Protestant con-

102

troversy over secular versus religious education. This put
considerable strain on people in the five communities.

After intense lobbying by individuals and groups from
Kinkora to the government and education officials, the
Department of Education approved the request, on August
20, 1941; however, there were several preconditions which
had to be met before the opening of classes on September
2, 1941; these included: a suitable classroom; a minimum
of twenty students; a teacher holding a valid license and
a university degree; and the appropriate textbooks as
prescribed by the Maritime Board of Education!2 The con-
ditions appeared impossible to meet in such a limited time.
The two comments used most frequenty to describe the
situation suggest much frantic activity; those comments
were: “We took to the roads;” and “We scrambled in all
directions? Textbooks and students’ desks could be obtain-
ed only in Nova Scotia; and through personal contacts by
Sister Mary Henry these were obtained. Finding twenty
students who had passed the P.E.I. grade ten exams (PWC
exams) proved more difficult. Only eight students in the five
communities had passed those exams in the summer of
1941. So “friendly” parishes, relatives, and friends
throughout P.E.I. were contacted to help recruit students.
The Sisters of St. Martha offered a large room on the first
floor of their convent in Kinkora as a classroom, and began
renovations to the upper floors to accommodate female
students as boarders. Several families in Kinkora offered
to take in students at “cheap rates? In the end, eleven com—
munities besides Kinkora contributed students for a total
enrollment of twenty-two. The names and home addresses
of the members of the first grade eleven graduating class,
printed in Table 10:4, show the extent of this cooperative
exercise.