History, Wonder Tales, Fairy Tales, Myths and Legends The Flemish | Page 262

Education
From: The Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples/Belgians/Cornelius J. Jaenen

Belgians in Canada have created few educational institutions for themselves, but they
have been active in promoting centres of learning, particularly in Quebec. Belgian
educators were considered to possess fewer “imperialist” or republican views than the
metropolitan French, although the Quebec clergy did come to view them as being
extraordinarily independent in their thinking. When the Université Laval was organized
in 1852, it relied heavily on its counterpart in Louvain, Belgium as a model. In 1908
Auguste-Joseph de Bray of Louvain organized the École des Hautes Études
Commerciales in Montreal, supervised its construction, and hired its staff. It went on to
great success under the direction of Henry Laureys, an economic geographer by
training, who added a simulated trading establishment and a museum of commerce
and industry to the institution. Alfred Fyen, a former officer in the Belgian army,
headed a number of trade schools in Quebec. In 1907 he took charge of a new
institution for the training of surveyors in Quebec City, and the following year he
became director of the École Polytechnique in Montreal. He founded the École des
Arts Décoratifs et Industriels in 1912 and subsequently the École d’architecture. To
each institution he brought a strong sense of organization and discipline.
Charles De Konick played an important role in university affairs as professor and dean
of the faculty of philosophy at Laval from 1934 to 1965. He surprised many by
advocating a non-confessional school system to replace the dual-confession model
still in place in Quebec during the reform years of the 1960s. As school enrolments in
the province mushroomed, Belgium was a source of teachers from the kindergarten
level through to graduate school. Because their diplomas were not always correctly
evaluated, the teachers in Montreal formed the Association des Diplômés de Belgique
to assert their rights. There is little doubt that their liberal ideas contributed not only to
the reform years of the 1960s (commonly known as the Quiet Revolution) in the
province but also to the student movement in its universities and colleges.
The work of Gustave Francq in labour relations in Quebec might also be regarded as
educational. In the early twentieth century, he was active as a union executive, militant
member of the Labour Party fighting for the eight-hour day and for universal suffrage,
organizer of working-class clubs in Montreal, and owner and editor of the bilingual Le
Monde ouvrier/Labour World, a newspaper that first appeared in 1916 with a mission
to educate the public about labour, class, and gender issues. Francq served as
president of the provincial Minimum Wage Commission, organized sports facilities and
food cooperatives, and lobbied for minimum-wage legislation and women’s rights until
his death in 1952.
Elsewhere in Canada, Belgians generally accepted the existing separate school
systems and worked within them. The Sisters of Notre-Dame-de-Namur came from
Cincinnati to open a school in Vankleek Hill in eastern Ontario in 1886 and later
branched out to Saint-Eugene, Masson, and Chapleau. Another Belgian order, the
Ursuline Sisters from Tildonk, arrived at Bruxelles in southern Manitoba in 1914 to
take charge of the village school, which they ran for the next thirty years. Within the
public system, they have mai