36 Success 0n the Edge

in the same way as that of the church under the auspices of his successors, Dugald MacDonald and Dugald MacIsaac. The first three Sisters arrived in the fall of 1868, and began classes shortly afterwards. This meant that girls could receive a superior education to that given in the small local schools, and training in the arts and household crafts - sewing of all kinds, for instance. Parents sent their daughters from as far away as the Magdalen Islands - ninety miles out in the Gulf of St. Lawrence - to Tignish Convent. The Sisters taught primarily in French, but also to some extent in English.

Though the school in Tignish itself was often in the charge of good teachers, at least from the 1870s on, the one-room country schools could offer little more than the most basic training. Originally most of the local schools were Acadian, with French teachers and schoolbooks. English was only taught to the more advanced students. It is not clear when an English school was first opened in the Tignish area; despite the desire of the Irish settlers to have their children educated, it seems to have been after 1850. Throughout the nineteenth century, and well into the twentieth, many children did not go to school at all or only went when not needed at home or on the farm.

The School Act of 1877 required all teaching to be in English. French, if taught at all, was to be taught as a dead language. The teaching of religious doctrine was also forbidden. This affected nearly the whole population of the area, and made an education at the Convent even more desirable. It also struck a blow against the survival

of the French language. Not for another seventy years would Acadian children have the opportunity to be educated in their mother tongue.