The increasing number of children in the post—war baby boom era gave rise to demands for new schools. By the 1950s, the education system in Prince Edward Island badly trailed the rest of the country. Only 29 percent of students completed high school compared to the national average of more than 50 percent. City schools were antiquated and badly outdated, and continued to operate along the lines of religious denominations. For the most part, Roman Catholic boys attended Queen Square School and Roman Catholic girls went to the Rochford Square or Notre Dame convents. Schools like Prince Street and West Kent, nominally non—denominational schools, welcomed mostly Protestant students. After Grade 10, students attended either Prince of Wales College or St. Dunstans University where they completed Grade 12.

Another change would transform Island society: television. In 1956, just as Kathleen and Bill were moving into their new home, CFCY—TV went on the air as a CBC affiliate. Television quickly permeated homes across the province. By the end of the 1950s, close to 70 percent of all Islanders owned at least one television set. The Murphys got their first television set in 1959, a black—and—white console model that sat on the floor. It eventually lost its horizontal control, and someone would have to get up and go over and hit the side of it to correct the picture.

Television altered social and community life. Local culture was

engulfed; Elvis Presley’s appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show proved

more entertaining than gathering around a kitchen stove telling stories and making music. However, people did not turn their backs on the traditional music they had enjoyed: the Don Messer Show was one of the most popular programs on television. People did not visit neighbours as often, and the narrow, insular society of Islanders opened up to the rest of the world.

The cumulative effects of modernization in the 1950s and 1960s would have a profound impact on the people of Prince Edward Island. Although the changes were more cumulative than cataclysmic, they supplanted a way of life that had been in eXistence for close to a century.

104 KATHLEEN MURPHY, MAITRIARC