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Last revised:
23 August 2000


Tentative de créer un Ministère de l'Instruction publique / Attempt to create a Ministry of Education, 1897-1898

Letter from F. G. Marchand to  Lieut.-Gov. Chapleau [December 7, 1897]

"Cabinet du Premier Ministre,
Province de Québec
Quebec City, December 7, 1897,

Personal

My dear Governor,

With this letter, I transmit the letter of Mgr. Bruchesi, dated from Rome, November 22 last.

Permit me to state that dropping our proposed school law, in the present circumstances, would cause deep agitation in the population of this province, would provoke the resignation of several members of the cabinet*, and would produce such grave consequences that I do not wish to take such responsibilities […].

F. G. Marchand".

[Note from the editor: there were rumours that G.-W. Stevens, Minister without portfolio, J.-E Robidoux, Provincial Secretary in the Cabinet, and as such responsible for education, F.-G. Miville Déchêne, Commissioner for Agriculture, and Adélard Turgeon, Commissioner for Colonisation and Mines in the government, were all threatening to resign if the bill was changed or withdrawn.]

Source: Louis-Philippe Audet, « Le projet de ministère de l'instruction publique en 1897 », in Mémoires de la société royale du Canada, Vol. 1, Fourth series, June 1963, pp. 133-161, p. 142.

© 2000 Claude Bélanger, Marianopolis College