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gigantic undertakings in the whole world, conceived, 

 engineered and built by energetic Scotchmen, aided by 

 Dominion money and backed by one of their own race, 

 greater than them all, Sir John A. Macdonald. It may 

 not be amiss to close this hasty retrospective sketch 

 with a notice of the development of the sciences and 

 intellectual pursuits, as evidenced in the foundation of 

 nourishing colleges and universities, without omitting 

 the praiseworthy efforts of our late Vice-Roy, the 

 Marquis of Lome, in the creation of the Eoyal Society 

 of Canada for the promotion of science and literature. 



In this glimpse of the past, it seems difficult to forget 

 the state of education, in 1837 ; and its development 

 during the half century which followed ; let us even 

 start earlier. History mentions as the pioneer of 

 teachers in New France, the Franciscan Friar Pacifique 

 du Plessis, who, in 1616, taught the Indian children 

 on the spot where Three-Rivers was afterwards founded 

 their catechism, and reading and writing as well. 

 About the same . time Father Jos. Le Caron, opened a 

 school at Tadoussac. The Franciscan Friars had landed 

 at Quebec, in 1615, but the capture of the place, in 

 1629, by the Kerkes, drove them seemingly back to 

 France, as well as the Jesuits, who had landed there in 

 1625. 



In 1632, Father Le Jeune wrote that he was busy 

 at Quebec, teaching the young idea to shoot, to wit : a 

 small Indian boy and a diminutive Ethiopian — un petit 

 sauvage et un petit negre. That his scholars from two 

 in 1632, were raised to twenty in the following year. 



In 1637, the Jesuits, or rather a young member of 

 the order, Rene Rohault, son of the marquis de Gama- 

 che, began the erection, on a lot of ground facing the 

 old Quebec market-place, in the upper town, of the 

 Jesuits' College, the crumbling, though solid walls, of 

 which, succumbed in 1877, to the power of dynamite. In 

 1663, Bishop Laval had founded Le Grand Se'minaire 

 of Quebec, for theological students ; five years later, in 



