CANADA
231
CANADA
thing pertaining thereto is left by the same Act to the
provincial legislatures. In the Province of Quebec
the civil law has adopted the legislation of the Church
on this point; in other words there is no such thing as
civil marriage. .Marriage is a religious ceremony and
the law recognizes the impediments and conforms to
the dispensations of the Church. When two persons
have decided to be married t lie banns are published
in the presence of the assembled faithful three succes-
sive Sundays before the solemnization; a dispensa-
tion may be obtained from one or two publications,
but not from all. If there is no impediment the mar-
riage takes place before the parish priest, generally
the bride's pastor, and two witnesses, after which an
entry is made in a special register. It is read aloud,
and signed by the priest, the witnesses, the bride and
bridegroom, and all those present who wish to do so.
The same entry with the same signatures is made in
a second register which t he parish priest returns to
the city or county record office at the end of each
year. The Church is strongly opposed to all mixed
marriages, viz. of Catholics with Protestants or schis-
matics. In cases where consent is given ad duritiam
mnlis to such unions, promise must be given not to
go before a clergyman, Protestant or otherwise, and
to rear the children in the Catholic Faith after having
them baptized.
Exemption for Priests. — As military duty is volun- tary in the Dominion, a priest is not compelled to serve. He is also exempt from jury duty both in crim- inal and civil cases. He cannot belong to the munici- pal council in his own parish or any other. But there is no law to prevent his becoming a member of Par- liament or taking an active part in the agricultural development of his count ry. In point of fact it is the colonizing priests who give much needed help in di- recting the work of colonization and in applying pro- tethods to the cultivation of the land.
Primary Education. — Education in Canada is a provincial and not a federal matter. Each province has its own system. Ontario and British Columbia have a minister and a general superintendent of edu- cation. In t lie Province of Quebec, education is under the control of the superintendent of public instruc- tion, assisted by a council of 35 members divided into two committees, one in charge of Catholic, the other of Protestant schools. In Manitoba, New Brunswick, Alberta, and Saskatchewan, the schools are left in control of the executive, who names a superintendent and other competent persons to take charge; in Nova Scotia educational matters are under the executive and a superintendent, in Prince Edward Island under a committee and superintendent.
Public schools are divided, on a religious basis, in
Quebec and part of Ontario. In those two provinces
there are separate Bchools for Catholics and for I'rot-
ts, and it is left to the parents to decide which
School
.Statistics
Schools
Pupils
Teachei -
Amount
Expenses
Prinre Edward Isl.
(80
19.9.56
572
$166,617
Nova Scotia
2.3S3
96,667
2.441
985,031
New Brunswick
19,19
1,816
631. S17
Quebec
149,178
7.413
3,816,395
Ontario
6,151
iss,:,m
9.456
6,077,869
Manitoba
.-.s.,-,-17
2.218
1,786,311
Alberta and Saskat-
chewan
998
33,191
1,152
1,066.602
British Columbia
-■:,. 7s7
624
597,764
Totals
19,988
1.1 11,108
2.5,692
114,128,406
schools their children shall attend. In the other prov-
inces the educational laws do not recognize any such
distinctions. In fact. Catholics, who are in the minor-
ity in ol her provinces. strive, as far as their mean- and
the tolerance of the civil authorities will permit, to
maintain separate schools, which more aptly, perhaps,
should be named minority schools. The foregoing
table gives the number of primary schools in each
province of the Dominion, the pupils who attend, and
the teachers in charge.
Atlas of Canada, published bv the Department of the Interior (Ottawa. 1906); Le Canada, son histoire, sc.i p ressonrces naturelles, published by the Minister of Agriculture of Canada (Ottawa, 1906); Annual Report of the Department of the Interior (1907) : Paonueeo, La liberie religieuse en Canada (Montreal, 1S72); Mignault, Droit civil canadien (Montreal, 189.5-98); Idem, Droit paroissial des cures (Montreal, 1893) Langelier, Droit civil canadien (Quebec); Report of the De- jiiirltnrnl ,'j 7' ,;i/i <n,<l Commerce (Ottawa, 1907)
A. FotRXF.T.
Canada. Catholicity in. — The subject will be treated under three headings: I. Period of French domination, from the discovery of Canada to the Treaty of Paris, in 1763; II. Period of British rule, from 1763 to the present day; III. Present condi- tions.
I. Period of French Di imination. — To France be- longs the honour of having planted Catholicism in Can- ada. To-day there seems little doubt that Basque, Breton, and Norman sailors had raised the cross on the shores of this country before tin- landing of the Vene- tian, Cabot (1407), and the Florentine. Wrrazzano (1522). and above all before Jacques ( 'artier, of Saint- Malo. who is regarded as the discoverer of the country, had reached Canada and made a brief sojourn on its shores. This celebrated explorer, spurred on by the favour of Francis I, made three voyages to Canada. On the first he discovered Gaspe Peninsula, and had Mi- celebrated there (7 July, 1534); on the second he sailed up the St. Lawrence, which he named (HI August, 1535), reached Stadacona (Quebec), and even proceeded as far as Hochelaga, on the site of which now stands the flourishing city of Montreal. His Ias( voyage (1541-42) is unimportant. If Cartier did not succeed in founding a colony in the territory which he added to his country's possessions, it j s due to him to state that the thought of spreading the Catholic Faith in new lands, far from being foreign to his undertaking, was its principal incentive.
The second half of the sixteenth century witnessed some attempts at settlements in Acadia which re- sulted in the foundation of Sainte-Croix and Port Royal (Annapolis in Nova Scotia). The appearance in this country of the first missionaries, secular priests and Jesuits, is worthy of note, though internal divis- ions and the hostility of England prevented their suc- cess. We must come down to Champlain and the opening of the seventeenth century to find traces of a regular colony. Samuel de Champlain (q. v. several voyages to Canada, settle, I there in 1608, and that same year laid the foundations of Quebec. Being a fervent Catholic lie wished to spread the blessings of the faith among the pagan savages of
the country. With this object in view, he sought aid from the Franciscan Recollects, who arrived in 1615, and inaugurated in the interior of Can- ada the missions so famous in the seventeenth century, in which the Jesuits (1625) as well as the Sulpicians (1657) were soon to have so glorious a share. The Canadian Indians, to whose conversion the Catholic missionaries devoted themselves, were divided into two quite distinct stocks: the Algon-
quins and the Huron-Iroquois. The former were found under various names north of the St. Lawrence and in the basin of the Ottawa, from the mouth of the great river to the prairies of the North West; the latter were settled south of Lake Ontario and in the Niagara peninsula. Their total population iocs not
seem to have exceeded 100J See Ilgonqi ore).
On the arrival of the Recollects (1615), Father d'Olbeau began his labours among the Montagnais oi the River Saguenay, and father l.e Caron, ascending
the St. Lawrence and the Ottawa, carried the faith into the heart of the Huron country, while two of their
