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 Britain and the World

Constructing National
Identity in Canadian and
Australian Classrooms
The Crown of Education

STEPHEN JACKSON
 Britain and the World

Series Editors
Martin Farr
School of Historical Studies
Newcastle University
Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK

Michelle D. Brock
Department of History
Washington and Lee University
Lexington, VA, USA

Eric G.E. Zuelow

Department of History
University of New England
Biddeford, ME, USA
Britain and the World is a series of books on ‘British world’ history. The
editors invite book proposals from historians of all ranks on the ways in
which Britain has interacted with other societies since the seventeenth cen-
tury. The series is sponsored by the Britain and the World society.
Britain and the Worldis made up of people from around the world who
share a common interest in Britain, its history, and its impact on the wider
world. The society serves to link the various intellectual communities
around the world that study Britain and its international influence from
the seventeenth century to the present. It explores the impact of Britain on
the world through this book series, an annual conference, and the Britain
and the World journal with Edinburgh University Press.
Martin Farr (martin.farr@newcastle.ac.uk) is the Chair of the British
Scholar Society and General Editor for the Britain and the World book
series. Michelle D. Brock (brockm@wlu.edu) is Series Editor for titles
focusing on the pre-1800 period and Eric G. E. Zuelow (ezuelow@une.
edu) is Series Editor for titles covering the post-1800 period.

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14795
 Stephen Jackson

Constructing National
Identity in Canadian
and Australian
Classrooms
The Crown of Education
Stephen Jackson
Assistant Professor of History
The University of Sioux Falls
Sioux Falls, SD, USA

Britain and the World

ISBN 978-3-319-89401-0    ISBN 978-3-319-89402-7 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89402-7

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018943803

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
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known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
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International Publishing AG part of Springer Nature.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 Acknowledgements

As I write these acknowledgements, I cannot help but be humbled by the

kindness others have shown to me throughout the creation of this book.
For a historian that often researches, writes, and lectures about the fasci-
nating but dour subject of imperialism, this has been a powerful reminder
that thoughtfulness, generosity, and decency still make the world go
round. This book, my first, was only possible because of an enormous
array of people and institutions who generously provided time, financial
resources, helpful critiques, and the occasional shoulder to cry on through-
out the entire process of researching and writing.
The project required extensive travel to Canada, Australia, and England,
and simply would not have been possible without the financial support of
several groups. Two travel grants from George Washington University
created the opportunity for research trips to London and to Melbourne,
Australia. The Canadian Embassy graciously awarded me a Doctoral
Student Research Award that funded a semester of study in Toronto,
Ontario.
Many librarians and archivists deserve thanks for their willingness to
shepherd a neophyte through the stacks. Staff at the Ontario Institute for
Studies in Education (OISE), the University of Toronto Libraries, the
Archives of Ontario, the Anglican Church of Canada’s Archives, the Alfred
Deakin Prime Ministerial Library (ADPML), the Archives of Victoria, and
the State Library of Victoria were perpetually cheerful and willing to bring
in a new box even if it was getting near to closing time. I owe particular
thanks to Kristen Thornton from the ADPML. She gave me the freedom
to roam the stacks of the Australia Textbooks Collection hunting for new

v
vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

sources and was a friendly face after a full day of research. Kathleen Imrie,
the gatekeeper of OISE’s Ontario Textbook Collection, was unfailingly
helpful and generous with her time and advice.
The Department of History at La Trobe University was gracious
enough to make me an Honorary Associate for the duration of my research
trip to Victoria. This affiliation provided me with invaluable access to their
library, but also a connection to the academic community of Australia. I
was especially fortunate to have the opportunity of presenting some of my
initial findings to their Graduate Colloquium. Their suggestions, encour-
agement, and probing questions provided the inspiration for many pro-
ductive avenues of research.
Numerous people took the time and effort to advise me throughout
the research process and deserve all the praise I can give. Many thanks go
out to Jessica Harland-Jacobs from the University of Florida, who inspired
me to pursue the study of the British World. Though he may not remem-
ber a brief meeting with a nervous graduate student on a sunny afternoon
in London, a conversation with Philip Buckner provided the spark for this
research project, and I’d like to thank him for his time. The faculty and
participants of the Ninth International Seminar on Decolonization, espe-
cially Wm. Roger Louis and Philippa Levine, enriched my understanding
of the end of empire and informed large parts of this research. My col-
leagues at the University of Sioux Falls, particularly Jenny Bangsund, Greg
Dyer, James Foster, Beth O’Toole, and Anna Simonson have been sup-
portive throughout the writing process, offering advice and encourage-
ment. Since this book is part of the Britain and the World Series, I have
had the privilege of getting to work with the British Scholar Society as well
as the editors at Palgrave Macmillan. Many thanks to Martin Farr, Molly
Beck, Oliver Dyer, and the peer reviewers for their helpful suggestions and
enthusiastic support of the project.
Two others deserve special mention. Dane Kennedy was always gra-
cious in his comments, patient with many requests and questions, and
provided a sterling example of how to be an engaged historian. I could not
have asked for a better adviser, mentor, and friend. Richard Boles was
instrumental in the creation of this work. For the better part of a decade,
he looked at endless drafts and offered insightful advice on how to fix
argumentative errors. His stylistic comments were unfailingly spot on, and
his critiques always, always made the work better. If this project is at all
enjoyable to read, it is in no small part thanks to his tireless work scrutiniz-
ing each and every chapter.
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
   vii

I also wish to thank family and friends who offered advice, gave encour-
agement, and spent countless hours video-chatting to stave off feelings of
homesickness during long-term research trips. My mother Susan, my
brothers David, Robert, and Jonathan, and my friends Swain Strickland
and Rickey Roach have all, in their own zany and loveable ways, made the
research and writing process much more interesting and enjoyable than it
had any right to be. Bittersweet recognition goes out to my father John
Jackson and my grandfather Robert Couch, who always believed in the
project but did not live to see its completion.
Finally, my wife Laura Jackson deserves recognition for demonstrating
that research can be more than just a job: it can be an adventure.
Opportunistically using my archival trips as vacation destinations, she and
I were able to wonder at the world from the Highlands of Scotland to
Niagara Falls to Uluru. She always had faith that this project could be suc-
cessful, even when I myself did not. For listening to me endlessly talk
about my research, helping me polish the writing, and putting up with
everything that comes with a project of this magnitude, I will forever be
grateful. With all my love I dedicate this book to her as a tenth anniversary
present.
 Contents

1 Introduction   1

2 Society and Education in Mid-Twentieth Century Ontario

and Victoria  21
1 Traditional, Progressive, or Hybrid? Developments
in Educational Philosophy 36
2 Publishing Textbooks in an Uncertain Market 47
3 Conclusion 52

3 From “Scrub Players Playing on a Vacant Lot” to the Big

Leagues: Ontarian and Victorian Educational
Constructions of the Imperial Relationship  63
1 Empire in the Curriculum 65
2 National Belonging in an Imperial Framework 71
3 Exploring the Imperial Past: Coming to Grips
with Imperialism 78
4 The Imperial Family 86
5 Conclusion 89

ix
x CONTENTS

4 “The Ideology of All Democratic Nations”: World War II

and the Rise of Religious Instruction in Ontario
and Victoria  97
1 Introduction 97
2 The Progressive Agenda and Curriculum Reform 99
3 The Drew Regulations in Ontario102
4 Religious Instruction in Victoria: 1944–1950115
5 Conclusion121

5 An Identity Quagmire: Ontarian and Victorian Religious

Education after 1950 129
1 Introduction129
2 Expansion, Challenges, and Reform in Victorian Religious
Education130
3 Ossification and Reform in Religious Studies in Ontario142
4 Conclusion152

6 The Stereotypical Classroom: Moving Towards

Multiculturalism in Ontario and Victoria, 1945–1980 161
1 The Exclusivity of the Classroom: 1930s–1965163
2 Assimilationist Policies in Postwar Education 1940–1965170
3 Moving Towards Inclusion in Ontarian Classrooms178
4 Paving the Way for Diversity in Victoria188
5 Conclusion197

7 Finding Historical Meaning without Britain 207

1 Uncle Sam Instead of John Bull?209
2 The League, the U.N., and Suez in the Classroom219
3 Multiculturalism as an Internal Source for Identity225
4 Conclusion234

8 Conclusion 241

Bibliography 247

Index 277
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

In a 1966 appeal to the Ontario Department of Education, Dorothy

McGuire, from the Christian Women’s Council on Education of
Metropolitan Toronto, opined that “Canada has been steadily losing its
image as a British country.”1 She blamed this loss of a British identity on
the massive and mostly non-British post-World War II immigration pro-
gram into Canada as well as the increase in the French–Canadian popula-
tion. She argued that immigrants were still mostly loyal to their original
homeland because “patriotism [had] not been impressed upon Canadians
as much as it should have been.”2 English-speaking students, who McGuire
asserted were more loyal to Canada, could naturally be expected to “cher-
ish the symbolism of the Union Jack and Red Ensign which is a part of
their heritage.” But minority groups needed to be educated more com-
pletely on Canada’s history.3 For McGuire, schools were the site at which
the intellectual elite could construct and instill into young people a shared
vision of Canadian society. If the education system did not convey a strong
spirit of nationalism, then Canadians would not be able to achieve the
“national destiny.”4 She recommended a strengthened system of religious
education for Ontario schools that would lay a moral foundation for a uni-
fied Canadian nationalism, bridging the gap between the various cultural
groups that composed Canadian society.
McGuire’s appeal to the Ontario Department of Education was a reac-
tionary response to a major transition within the English-speaking

© The Author(s) 2018 1

S. Jackson, Constructing National Identity in Canadian
and Australian Classrooms, Britain and the World,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89402-7_1
2 S. JACKSON

­ rovinces of Canada. In the 1960s, the political and cultural relationship

p
with Great Britain faded in its significance to their sense of national iden-
tity. By the late 1960s, McGuire’s attachment to Britishness was out of
step with the predominant educational thinking of the day. A major com-
mission on education produced an influential report just two years later
with a profoundly different viewpoint. According to Living and Learning,
a central task of educators was to aid the “Canadian struggle to establish a
national identity reflecting its multi-cultural nature and its bicultural
base,” an identity that would transcend “the bounds of narrow national-
ism.”5 Educators rejected Britishness in favor of a multicultural approach
that would, at least in theory, celebrate the many different peoples of
Canada rather than focus exclusively on the Anglo-Saxon heritage.
Educators through the 1950s promoted an exclusivist Anglocentrism
as the basis for the Canadian national identity. They believed the imperial
relationship was crucial for Canadian international prestige and relevance.
But years of immigration by non-Britons, the accelerated pace of decolo-
nization within the British Empire, and a major nationalist surge by French
Canadians prompted the Canadian federal government to officially declare
itself a multicultural nation in 1971. This represented an official accep-
tance of cultural diversity within Canadian society and ended overt appeals
for cultural assimilation. This was a remarkably swift change for a state that
had not even developed a formula for national citizenship until 1947, rely-
ing instead on the concept of British subjecthood for most of its exis-
tence.6 But this rapid construction of a new identity was not unique to the
Canadian experience. At much the same time, Australia went through a
similar metamorphosis from an Anglocentric identity to one of official
multiculturalism. Constructing National Identity in Canadian and
Australian Classrooms: The Crown of Education traces the development
and eventual abandonment of the exclusivist and assimilationist identity
centered on Britishness that had been at the heart of Victorian and
Ontarian education in the mid-twentieth century.
Looking at this shift in national identity through the lens of education
and within a comparative framework, this project addresses several critical
questions regarding the cultural decolonization of Canada and Australia
from the 1930s until the late 1970s. How did educators and government
officials maintain and reinforce Anglocentrism and the imperial attach-
ment in the 1940s and 1950s? And, by the 1960s and 1970s what forces
drove the abandonment of Britishness as a critical component of the
national identity? How did the educational establishment navigate the
 INTRODUCTION 3

critical transition from Anglocentrism to multiculturalism, and in what

ways did other actors in these societies contest, debate, and ultimately
define this movement? Answering these questions helps us understand
how Canadian and Australian national identities were constructed and
contested in the critical decades from the Second World War through the
1970s.
Educational institutions offer a unique window into issues of national
identity in settler societies since they were designed specifically to protect,
defend, and reproduce views on the world deemed acceptable by policy-
makers. In the words of an Ontarian Royal Commission on education
published in 1950: “Education is everybody’s business.”7 Ever since edu-
cation became the responsibility of the state, it has been a primary means
by which policymakers and intellectuals promote their notions of national
identity.8 As the locus of national identity slowly shifted away from the
concept of Britishness, this was powerfully evident in educational curri-
cula, textbooks, and other materials that had to redefine how to teach, in
a literal sense, what it meant to be Canadian or Australian.
Although educational systems often declare themselves value-free, his-
torians have demonstrated that one purpose of public education is to pro-
duce “a national ethos, and an incontrovertible sense of political
orthodoxy.”9 In Canada and Australia the schools were a critical site at
which the intellectual elite constructed and disseminated an officially sanc-
tioned version of the national identity. Textbooks, curricula, and educa-
tional publications provide a valuable lens for historians to view the
evolution of national self-understanding.
Primary and secondary educational sources document this historically
significant transition away from Britishness in the colonies of white settle-
ment. The production of texts for primary and secondary schools was a
complex process that occurred at the intersection of political, intellectual,
and cultural constructions of the national identity. There are few places
where officials in Canada and Australia were quite as explicit in defining
the national identity as in textbooks and curricula meant for primary and
secondary students. Educators and the political officials who approved
their work transmitted the normative cultural ideals they found essential
to pass down to the next generation. Educational materials, therefore,
contained an officially sanctioned worldview for students deemed neces-
sary for the preservation of the Australian and Canadian way of life.
The centrality of education to the process of national identity forma-
tion in the mid-twentieth century British World is widely acknowledged,
4 S. JACKSON

but as yet there has been no full-length study on this important subject.
Jatinder Mann’s recent work examines the Australian and Canadian transi-
tion towards multiculturalism, and he acknowledges that education was a
crucial component of the national identity in Canada.10 But he does not
address Australian educational initiatives in his work. José Igartua argues
in his work The Other Quiet Revolution that English Canadians, in the face
of the French Canadian Quiet Revolution, swiftly abandoned their previ-
ous Anglocentric ethnic form of nationalism in the 1960s, replacing it
with a sense of civic nationalism as a foundational principle.11 Both of
these works raise important questions about the nature of Britishness after
the Second World War, and they hold implications for the rest of the
British Dominions. This project builds upon these insights by offering the
first book-length study of the rise and demise of Britishness in education
as a key site of national identity construction in Canada and Australia.
Canada and Australia are comparable not only because of the historical
parallels in their development as colonies but also because they responded
similarly to the collapse of the British Empire by officially designating
themselves “multicultural nations,” thereby resolving the identity crisis
brought on in part by that collapse.12 Because education in both places
was a provincial or state responsibility, this study focuses on the province
of Ontario and the state of Victoria as case studies of the challenge posed
by the decline of a British-affiliated identity for the wider English-speaking
communities of the two countries.13 Ontario and Victoria offer a valuable
basis for comparison because of their large population size, which gave
them a high degree of influence over the production of educational mate-
rials in Canada and Australia, and because of several other critical historical
parallels, which together make the comparison of these locations appropri-
ate and meaningful.
Ontario and Victoria were the second most populous territories in their
countries. Both were dominated by a major urban center, Toronto in
Ontario and Melbourne in Victoria, with a large and sparsely populated
hinterland. For the time period under consideration, Ontario was the larg-
est English-speaking province in Canada and the center of educational
publication.14 Many publishers of textbooks focused on creating books
that met Ontarian standards, and these materials were often used in
schools throughout Canada. Victoria was also a major market for textbook
publishers in Australia, and, along with New South Wales, considered one
of the leading states in Australian education.15 Detailed analysis of text-
books is central to several chapters of the book, so the large population in
 INTRODUCTION 5

both Ontario and Victoria and hence their importance to textbook pro-
duction and marketing in Canada and Australia make these two territories
crucial case studies for an understanding of educational developments in
these nations as a whole.
Ontario and Victoria also shared numerous postwar historical similari-
ties that revealed important parallels in the ways they used and ultimately
discarded Britishness as an important component of their national identi-
ties. In the postwar era, Ontario and Victoria made education a major
priority, as evidenced by the rapid rise in postwar educational expendi-
ture.16 Both territories were major centers for postwar immigration, neces-
sitating both an increase in the physical capacity of educational systems as
well as attention to the special needs of non-British immigrant students.
Since many of these new Canadians and Australians were not of British
origin, their presence in the educational systems challenged officials and
educators to alter the assimilationist policies that had promoted confor-
mity to an Anglocentric ideal.
Critically, as Chaps. 4 and 5 show, both Ontario and Victoria experi-
mented with new forms of religious education during and immediately
after the Second World War, modeled in part on similar legislation occur-
ring in England, to correct a perceived problem of moral decay. Their
choices to make religious education compulsory were steeped in the rhet-
oric of Britishness and proved enormously controversial. The debates sur-
rounding religious instruction in Ontario and Victoria over the next three
decades reveal critical perspectives on issues of national identity and illumi-
nate the changing understanding of Britishness in Canadian and Australian
society.
This project supports the findings of British World scholarship that
view the relationship with Britain and British culture as an essential com-
ponent of the development of Canadian and Australian identity.17 The
development of the British Dominions across the globe created a transna-
tional system centered on the ideal of Britishness.18 The mass migration of
Britons to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa created a
series of communities with shared traditions and cultures. This scholarship
has challenged older interpretations that viewed the relationship with
Britain as an impediment to a unique and stable national identity.19
Importantly, British World historians assert that the rise of colonial nation-
alism was not a direct contradiction to a concomitant sense of Britannic
nationalism.20
6 S. JACKSON

British World scholarship on national identities and shared cultures

in Australia and Canada often focuses on the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries and has revealed the intense attachment between
the Dominions and Britain on a number of economic, social, cultural,
racial, and gendered lines. The events following the Second World War,
however, remain understudied. This project demonstrates that educa-
tors continued to adapt and redefine the meaning of Britishness to suit
their own needs in the postwar era. This is particularly evident when
looking at the rise of Protestant religious education following the
Second World War. Fearful of the collapse of democracy, educators in
both Canada and Australia asserted that a non-denominational
Protestant religion represented the moral core of the nation and made
it a mandated subject of study for the first time. Canadian and Australian
educators studied for this project embraced an identity centered both
on their own particular location and on a wider community of Britons
until the 1960s.
The comparative perspective adopted for this project reveals striking
parallels between the responses of intellectuals and government officials in
Canada and Australia to the diminution of British power following the
Second World War. From the Depression years through the 1950s educa-
tors espoused a collective identity centered on cultural and political attach-
ment to Britain. This attachment perpetuated the presumption that the
true citizen of Canada and Australia was white, Protestant, and culturally
British. Educational institutions, textbooks, and curricula reflected these
assumptions and promoted assimilation to the normative cultural ideal.
Non-British groups were often stereotyped, marginalized, or simply omit-
ted from educational materials.
Beginning in the 1960s, however, educators began to call into ques-
tion many of the Anglocentric assumptions of previous generations.
This was the result of several changes both internal and external to
Canadian and Australian societies. Both countries initiated ambitious
immigration programs that brought hundreds of thousands of non-
Britons into their societies.21 Although in the 1940s and 1950s immi-
gration was limited to Europeans, it was expanded in the 1960s to
include non-whites. These groups began to challenge the educational
establishment with demands for cultural recognition and for some con-
cessions to their unique educational needs. In Canada, the other major
historical event was the Quiet Revolution in Quebec. The dramatic rise
in nationalism within the French Canadian population threatened the
 INTRODUCTION 7

stability of the entire country, and schools across Canada faced difficult
questions regarding the treatment of French Canadian history and
students.
In addition to the major internal changes occurring within Canadian
and Australian society, the British Empire collapsed. Begun in the late
1940s with the partition of and withdrawal from India and Pakistan,
decolonization accelerated in the 1960s.22 Of major concern to Canadians
and Australians was the rapid increase in Commonwealth membership,
which had previously been reserved for the colonies of white settlement
alone. Above all, however, they worried about the inability of Britain to
offer either economic or military security as well as the desire of the British
government to join Europe rather than preserve and promote the
Empire.23 The diplomatic and political aspects of decolonization are rela-
tively well known, but as Jordanna Bailkin argues in her study of Britain
The Afterlife of Empire, “decolonization could also be deeply personal,”
occurring in the quotidian structures of everyday life such as education.24
As decolonization gained momentum in the 1950s and 1960s, Canadian
and Australian educators were faced with the difficulty of maintaining an
identity centered on a British Empire that was disappearing before their
very eyes. Both Ontario and Victoria quickly began to alter their curricula
and textbooks in similar ways, though Victorian educators were far more
reticent about abandoning an identity centered on Britishness. The solu-
tion educators eventually developed involved two avenues of reform. One
was to initiate measures that removed the assimilationist—and frequently
discriminatory—emphasis on a normative Anglocentric cultural ideal. This
took the form of weeding out stereotyping in textbooks, introducing new
curricula emphasizing the pluralist heritage of Canadian and Australian
schools, and providing more resources to immigrants and non-Anglo chil-
dren. The second and far more difficult process involved constructing a
new basis for the national identity. By the late 1970s both Ontario and
Victoria had taken significant steps to address the first problem but had
tremendous difficulty with the second.
Even within the provincial or state level, educational practices varied
considerably. Perhaps the most dramatic variations were due to religious
differences. According to the terms of the Canadian British North America
Act (1867), Ontario maintained two state-sponsored school systems, the
public schools and the Roman Catholic Separate Schools (R.C.S.S.).25
The provincial government provided far less funding for the R.C.S.S., per-
petuating a system of state-sponsored inequality based on religious lines.
8 S. JACKSON

Victoria did not have a publicly funded system of Catholic education, but
it did have a large network of privately run Catholic schools that remained
influential in the twentieth century.26 In both Ontario and Victoria, the
relationship between religion and education was a controversial issue that
regularly affected policy decisions, especially as some educators and activ-
ists argued that Protestantism was an essential part of the national
identity.
Although the religious divisions between schools were an immensely
important component of education in both Ontario and Victoria and
inform several chapters of this book, the focus will be on the public schools
of Ontario and Victoria, not on the separate systems of Catholic educa-
tion.27 The exact nature of Catholic education varied tremendously within
Canada and Australia. Ontario maintained a dual system of education
because that was the system in place before the British North America Act
(1867),28 but other English-speaking provinces were not under this obli-
gation and not all maintained a separate school system. Thus, including
Catholic education would make this study less representative of the pre-
dominantly English-speaking provinces of Canada.
Despite a focus on the predominantly English-speaking schools, issues
concerning the education of minority groups, including immigrants,
indigenous communities, and religious minorities, are central to this work.
With high levels of non-English speaking immigration both to Australia
and to Canada following the Second World War, the publicly funded
school systems needed to expand their language training programs and
develop new ways of assimilating non-traditional students. In Ontario,
Catholic, Jewish, and Franco-Ontarian educators continuously pressured
the Department of Education for greater levels of inclusion. In fact, reli-
gious minorities were often at the forefront of movements to reduce
Anglocentrism in the classroom. By the late 1960s immigrant communi-
ties and indigenous Canadians and Australians advocated forcefully for a
rejection of the overwhelming focus on cultural assimilation and lobbied
for an end to stereotyping in educational materials. Although largely
ignored or marginalized for decades, these groups began to exert a power-
ful influence on education officials in both Ontario and Victoria.
This project emphasizes state or provincial, rather than local, educa-
tional policy. Sources include Department of Education minutes and
memoranda, curricula, and printed educational materials made available to
educators including textbooks and teacher’s guides. The study is based on
an examination of all officially mandated curricula and a large sample of
 INTRODUCTION 9

approved textbooks for disciplines such as history, geography, and social

studies in the primary and secondary schools in the state of Victoria and
the province of Ontario from the 1930s through the 1970s, as well as a
host of educational documents produced on an ad hoc basis for the
Departments of Education such as annual reports, minutes and memo-
randa, and departmental files.29 In both Ontario and Victoria, there were
several major commissions designed to seek out public input on educa-
tional issues during this time period that deeply informed the book. These
commissions’ reports were produced by a large array of people including
academics, intellectuals, elected officials, bureaucrats, child psychologists,
teacher unions, citizen groups, and religious organizations. These com-
mittees and commissions represent an important snapshot of the intellec-
tual elite in each territory. This array of sources allows for a careful
examination of the nexus of intellectual and administrative discourses that
produced textbooks and curricula deemed officially acceptable for chil-
dren, thus profoundly shaping the content, goals, and outcomes of educa-
tion in classrooms across Ontario and Victoria.
By their very nature, however, educational sources are limited in a vari-
ety of ways. In the first place, curricula, textbooks, and other educational
materials studied here were produced by an elite group of academics (with
the occasional classroom teacher), elected officials, publishing companies,
and bureaucrats. Each of these groups had their own agenda for what they
wrote, which necessarily altered their narrative of the national identity. All
of them were united in fearing controversial issues that would cause prob-
lems within school communities. Since Canada and Australia underwent
enormous social and political change in the three decades following the
Second World War, changes to curricula and educational content often
took time, and it is clear that primary and secondary textbooks and curri-
cula rarely reflected the full extent of political and social ferment exhibited
in both countries, particularly in the 1960s.
The aversion of education professionals to controversy and the diffi-
culty in effecting swift change is most evident in the consideration of reli-
gious education in Ontario. Unlike in Victoria, the Ontarian program of
religious instruction was administered directly by the Department of
Education and by regular teachers. Over time, the Department became
increasingly unwilling to support religious education because the subject
continued to cause complaints from religious minorities. In a 1962 meet-
ing with the Ontario Inter-Church Committee, the Assistant
Superintendent of the Curriculum, David Clee, said, “The Department
10 S. JACKSON

can only do so much—it must respect the people, and its policy must
respect the society it serves.”30 Vocal minority groups who were not well
represented within the academic and political elite could nevertheless have
a profound impact on what was or was not acceptable in the classroom
through the generation of educational materials. The issue of religious
education is an extreme example of where passions flared up almost con-
tinuously from the 1940s through the late 1960s; it illustrates the unwill-
ingness of the Department of Education in Ontario at that time to publish
and widely distribute controversial materials. This sort of scenario is an
example of why scholars René Lévesque and Alf Chaiton argue that educa-
tion cannot be “a prime mover of change.” They contend that education
systems are designed to “institutionalize whatever changes society at large
has agreed upon” and that “in a time of transition, the educational system
reflects the confusion around it.”31 Despite these limitations, the educa-
tional materials analyzed in this project represent an official discourse that
generated and sustained a dominant master narrative of history dissemi-
nated to a huge number of children for several decades.
Constructing National Identity in Canadian and Australian Schools
consists of seven thematic chapters and a conclusion that collectively ana-
lyze the gradual transition from Anglocentric assumptions of Britishness
to the confusion brought on by the adoption of multiculturalism. Chapter
2 provides an introduction to the education systems of Ontario and
Victoria. It examines important social and political changes in Canada and
Australia from the 1930s until the 1970s that had a direct impact on edu-
cational policy and planning. Specifically, it highlights the crucial impor-
tance of the population increase in both countries as a result of natural
population growth and, more importantly, the large-scale immigration
policies adopted by both countries shortly after the conclusion of the
Second World War. Heady economic growth accelerated the pace of
urbanization and precipitated a large increase in white-collar work,
prompting a higher value to be placed on education. Ontarian and
Victorian educators responded by increasing the structural capacity of
their education systems, but also lavished resources on the modernization
of facilities.
Chapter 3 compares the treatment of the British Empire in Ontarian
and Victorian textbooks and curricula. Canadian and Australian involve-
ment in the British Empire/Commonwealth was characterized in educa-
tional materials as a central component of each country’s national identity.
Authors and educators continued to emphasize the importance of the
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 Spittal of Glenshee
After the ’45 General Wade adopted the southern part of this road as
the line of his great military route from Blairgowrie to Fort George,
but from Castleton he turned to the east, went down the Dee valley
to Crathie, and thence across the hills to Corgarff in Upper Strathdon
from which he reached Tomintoul by the “Lecht.” This route he
completed in 1750.
These roads had naturally to lead to fords in the rivers, and, when
bridges came to be built, it was just as natural that they should be
placed in the line of established routes. When the Bridge of Alford
was built over the Don in 1810-11 and the Bridge of Potarch over the
Dee in 1812-13, a new line of road was made across country to
connect them. It went from Dess through Lumphanan and Leochel to
the Don valley.
The first turnpike made in Aberdeenshire was the road from the
Bridge of Dee to the city of Aberdeen _viâ_ Holborn Street, which
completed the northern section of the great post-road between
Edinburgh and Aberdeen. This was in 1796.
About the same time was made the North Deeside Road reaching
from Aberdeen to Aboyne and thence to Ballater, Crathie, and
Braemar, where it met the Cairnwell Road. Another was the
Aberdeen and Tarland route, which went by Skene and Echt with
branches joining on to those already in existence. One of these
struck off at Skene, and, crossing the hill of Tilliefourie, proceeded to
Alford. It was afterwards extended up the Strath by Mossat, and
Glenkindie to Corgarff, where it met General Wade’s road.
The great post-road from Aberdeen to Inverness went by Woodside,
Bucksburn, Kintore, Inverurie, the Glens of Foudland to Huntly and
Cairnie on the boundary of Banffshire. It had branches from Huntly to
Portsoy through Rothiemay and to Banff through Forgue by the
Bridge of Marnoch.
The Strathbogie Road from Huntly to Donside by way of Gartly,
Rhynie, and Lumsden joined the Strathdon Road at Mossat. Though
by no means the most convenient, it is still used as the route along
which the mails are conveyed to Strathdon.
The Aberdeen and Banff Road left the post-road at Bucksburn and
passing through Dyce, New Machar, Old Meldrum, Fyvie, Turriff, and
King Edward made for the Bridge of Banff.
In the eastern district the most important route was that to
Peterhead. It crossed the new Bridge of Don, and, passing through
Belhelvie, Ellon, and Cruden, came to Peterhead by the coast. From
there it went straight across country to Banff by Longside, Mintlaw,
New Pitsligo, and Byth, thence over the Longmanhill to Macduff.
Later a coast route was made connecting Peterhead and
Fraserburgh, by way of St Fergus, Crimond and Lonmay. Another
continuation of it was along the coast past Rosehearty, Pennan,
Gardenstown and Troup Head into Banffshire.
It was only during the nineteenth century that proper and serviceable
highways were constructed. Prior to that time a few main roads had
been made but side connections were few and badly kept, so that
wheeled vehicles, if they had existed, would have been a useless
luxury. Early in the eighteenth century wheeled vehicles were
absolutely unknown. In 1765 the judges of the Circuit Court of
Justiciary first travelled to Aberdeen in chaises instead of on
horseback. The first mail coach did not arrive till 1798. It took 21
hours between Edinburgh and Aberdeen. Not till 1811 did passenger
coaches begin to ply between Aberdeen and Huntly. Then only was
it possible for the farmer to convey his products by cart, which
superseded the pack-horse as a means of transport.
The upkeep of the roads was secured by a system of tolls. Traces of
the system still survive in the renovated toll-bar houses, which in
some cases retain a window facing right and a window facing left to
mark the approach of vehicles from either side. Aberdeenshire
abolished tolls in 1865.
The Railway system reached Aberdeen in 1848. Prior to that time for
fifty years the stage coach plying between Edinburgh and Aberdeen
had been, apart from the sea-routes, the only bond between this part
of the country and the south. A few years later, in 1854, what is now
the Great North of Scotland Railway was opened from Aberdeen to
Huntly, and two years thereafter was extended as far as Keith. This
is still the main line of railway in the county. It touches in its course
Dyce, Kintore, Inverurie, Insch, and Huntly. By and by branch lines
were constructed forking off from it at various points; _first_ from
Inveramsay, through Wartle, Fyvie, to Turriff and ultimately to
Macduff; _second_ from Inverurie across country to Old Meldrum;
_third_ from Kintore up Donside by Kemnay and Monymusk to
Alford; and lastly from Dyce through New Machar, Udny, Ellon to
New Maud, where it bifurcates, one fork going on to Peterhead the
other to Fraserburgh. This is the Buchan and Formartine branch.
Recently a sub-branch was made from Ellon running to the coast
and touching Cruden Bay, its terminus being at Boddam within half
an hour’s distance of Peterhead. From Fraserburgh, a light railway
runs to Cairnbulg, Inverallochy and St Combs. The only other line of
railway in the county is the Deeside line, which runs up the Dee
valley as far as Ballater. It was begun in 1853, and Banchory was the
terminus till 1859, when an extension was made to Aboyne; then in
1866 it was extended to Ballater.
The lack of population and the paucity of goods apart from
agricultural products have handicapped the local railways, which are
far from prosperous. The chances of extension in other directions
are very remote. Meantime outlying districts, such as Strathdon and
Braemar, are served by motors. The holiday and tourist traffic during
the summer months and the influx of sportsmen at the shooting
season are contributory sources of revenue, but even these show no
tendency to grow—a state of affairs due to the prevalent use of
private motor-cars.
Aberdeenshire has no canals and is never likely to have. Prior to the
advent of railways a canal, designed by Telford, the great engineer,
was constructed between Aberdeen and Port Elphinstone on the
south side of Inverurie. It was opened for passenger and goods
traffic in 1806, and continued to serve the district until the steam-
engine sounded its knell. For nearly half a century it was a bond
between the chief city and the centre of the county and, although it
never was remunerative to the promoters, and provided a very slow
mode of conveyance, it was of great public service. The railway line
to the north runs parallel at certain places to the track of this canal,
whose superannuated embankments may still be recognised, after
half a century, at various points between Aberdeen and Inverurie.
 23. Administration and Divisions.
In the twelfth century Scotland was divided into Sheriffdoms, where
the Sheriff was the minister of the Crown for trying civil and criminal
cases. The office was hereditary until the rebellion of ’45, when its
hereditary character was abolished. Aberdeenshire has a non-
resident Sheriff-Principal (who is also Sheriff of Banff and
Kincardine) besides two resident Sheriff-substitutes. These deal with
ordinary civil cases such as debts, as well as with criminal cases
involving fine or imprisonment, but not as a rule involving penal
servitude, except forgery, robbery and fire-raising.
The head of the county is the Lord-Lieutenant. Next to him is the
Vice-Lieutenant and a large number of Deputy-Lieutenants and
Justices of the Peace, but the chief administrative body is the County
Council, which consists of 65 members. These elect the chairman
and vice-chairman, who are designated respectively convener and
vice-convener. County Councils were first established in 1889. The
county is divided into districts, and each district has so many
divisions, or parishes, which elect one councillor. Aberdeenshire has
85 parishes, which are grouped in eight districts: (1) Deer with fifteen
electoral divisions, (2) Ellon with seven, (3) Garioch with six, (4)
Deeside with six, (5) Turriff with seven, (6) Aberdeen with nine, (7)
Alford with four, and (8) Huntly with four, making fifty-eight electoral
divisions in all. The powers of the Council are to maintain roads and
bridges, to administer the Contagious Diseases (Animals) Acts, to
appoint a medical officer of health and a sanitary inspector, to deal
with the pollution of rivers and to see to the protection of wild birds.
Previous to the passing of the Act of 1889 the Commissioners of
Supply were the chief governing body. They are still retained but
have no jurisdiction, except in so far as they elect members to the
Standing Joint Committee. This committee includes representatives
from the County Council appointed annually and from the
Commissioners of Supply, together with the Sheriff _ex officio_. The
Standing Joint Committee has charge of the Police and controls all
the capital expenditure in the county.
Each district has a district committee consisting of the county
councillors for the divisions of the district and of parish councillors
selected by each parish council of the district. Each parish has in this
way two representatives on the district committee, one elected by
the electors and the other appointed by the parish council. This
district committee is the local authority for administering the Public
Health Acts, but has no power to raise money—that being the
function of the County Council as a whole.
By a later Act of 1894, a parish council was established in every
parish. The number of councillors in landward parishes is fixed by
the County Council and in burghal parishes by the Town Council.
The parish council looks after the Poor Law and must provide for
pauper lunatics, sees to the levying of the school rate, to the
administration of the Vaccination Acts, and to the appointment of
Registrars.
The affairs of the county are therefore divided amongst three bodies,
the County Council, the District Committees and the Parish Councils.
Prior to 1890 the powers of local administration lay with the
Commissioners of Supply, the Road Trustees and the Parochial
Boards, whose functions are now vested in these other bodies.
Each parish, besides having a Parish Council, has a School Board,
which, since 1872, has administered the education of the parish.
Education is free and compulsory for all children between the ages
of 5 and 14. The schools are of three types—primary, intermediate,
and secondary. The intermediate schools provide a three years’
course beyond the elementary stage, and the secondary schools a
further course lasting for two years.
The County Council now takes a certain share in educational
administration, having powers to allocate grants of money to schools
and bursaries to pupils. The training of teachers, which until recently
was in the hands of the Churches (Established and United Free),
has now passed to a Provincial Committee elected by various
representative bodies.
Every burgh has a Town Council consisting of Provost, Magistrates
and Councillors, who hold their seats for three years. The number of
councillors varies with the size of the town. In Aberdeen, the
councillors are elected by wards, of which there are eleven, each
ward electing three representatives, one of whom retires annually.
The Town Council of Aberdeen consists of 34 members, the Dean of
Guild being an _ex officio_ member. The Town Council is the local
authority for Public Health, and looks after the streets, buildings and
sewers. It owns the gas works, water works, tramways, electric
power station, and public parks. It regulates the lighting, cleansing,
and sanitation. The Magistrates, who are elected annually by the
Council, are the licensing authority, and form the police court for the
trial of minor offences.
The city of Aberdeen is not like Peterhead and Fraserburgh included
in the administration of the county, being itself constituted the county
of a city, with a Lord-Lieutenant of its own, who is the Lord-Provost
_ex officio_. It has its own Parish Council as well as its own School
Board.
Aberdeenshire is represented in Parliament by four members—two
for the county, east and west, and two for the city, north and south.
Some of the smaller burghs, Kintore, Inverurie and Peterhead, are
grouped with similar burghs in Banff and Moray (Banff, Elgin, Cullen)
to form a constituency called the Elgin Burghs, which returns one
member. In addition, the University of Aberdeen shares a member
with the University of Glasgow.
There is still a certain amount of overlapping and confusion in the
administrative divisions. For example, Torry, which is on the
Kincardineshire side of the Dee, is really a suburb of Aberdeen, and
as such elects members to the Town Council, the Parish Council,
and the School Board, but it has no share in electing a member of
Parliament for Aberdeen, being in that regard part of
Kincardineshire, and voting for a representative of that county. There
are other similar anomalies.
 24. The Roll of Honour.
It is an accepted fact that Aberdonians have intellectual
characteristics somewhat different from those of their fellow-
countrymen, the result partly of race, partly and chiefly, we believe,
of environment. We have already alluded to the amalgamation of
nationalities that went to form the people of this north-eastern corner
of the kingdom. Doubtless the Spartan upbringing that was the rule
in the county served to develop sturdy character and good physique.
The result is that the Aberdonian has distinguished himself in all
parts of the Empire and even beyond it. Not that he has often risen
to the front rank of greatness, but he is frequently found well forward
among the best of the second-class.
Their own county presenting no tempting openings for ability,
Aberdonians have migrated from the narrow home-sphere in great
numbers and have made their mark as administrators, medical
officers, and even as soldiers of fortune. In the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries the cadets of the great houses, exiled by the
pressure of the times, joined the service of continental kings and
rose to high rank in the armies of Sweden, France, and Russia.
Chief amongst these was James Keith, younger brother of the last
Earl Marischal, and born at Inverugie Castle. After serving for
nineteen years in Russia, he joined the service of Frederick the
Great, under whom he attained to the highest military rank as Field-
Marshal, contributing to victories gained during the Seven Years’
War and conducting the retreat from Olmütz. At the battle of
Hochkirchen, when charging the enemy, he fell mortally wounded in
1758. Peterhead keeps his memory green by a statue presented to it
by the Emperor William I. It is a replica in bronze of a similar effigy in
Berlin. Field-Marshal Keith is probably the native of Aberdeenshire
who has figured most largely in history. He was Frederick’s right
hand, and his military genius has been fittingly acknowledged by
Carlyle in his great work.
Another of the same type, though less eminent, was Patrick Gordon
of Auchleuchries, who fought both on the Swedish and on the Polish
side, but ultimately transferred his sword to Russia, where he rose to
the highest rank, and on his death-bed was watched over and wept
over by Peter the Great. He was born in 1635 at Auchleuchries near
Ellon and died in 1699. He was a perfect example of the successful
military adventurer, one of the type so skilfully depicted by Walter
Scott in Dugald Dalgetty.
The county has been a prolific recruiting ground for the Army. After
the ’45 Chatham’s device for breaking down the clan system and
diverting the energies of the Highlanders into healthier channels by
enlisting them in British regiments was an inspiration of genius. In
1794 the Duke of Gordon raised during a few weeks a regiment of
Gordon Highlanders, which first distinguished itself with Sir Ralph
Abercromby in Egypt, and did noble service also in the Peninsula
and at Waterloo.
In the work of empire-making in India and elsewhere, the Aberdonian
has borne a notable part. He has shown ability to exercise a singular
mastery over inferior races. Conspicuous in this respect was Sir
Harry B. Lumsden, who formed the Corps of Guides out of the most
daring free-booters of the North-West frontier of India.
In statesmanship the county has been surpassed by other districts,
and yet it has the distinction of having produced one Prime Minister
—the fourth Earl of Aberdeen (1784-1860), who was responsible for
the Crimean War, and whom Byron styled “the travelled Thane,
Athenian Aberdeen.”
The ecclesiasts of distinction are too numerous to mention.
Foremost amongst them was Bishop Elphinstone, who, though not a
native of the county, identified himself with its interests when he
became Bishop (1483), founded the University, King’s College, the
light of the North (1494), and the church of St Machar (the Cathedral
in Old Aberdeen) and was a pioneer in all that makes for educational
enlightenment. He was instrumental in introducing the art of printing
into Scotland. His tomb is very appropriately in King’s College, the
centre from which radiated the beneficent influence of his life. Henry
Scougal (1650-1678), scholar and saint, son of Bishop Scougal and
the inspirer of John Wesley, was a student of King’s College. He had
not been long ordained in his charge at Auchterless before he was
appointed to the Chair of Divinity in King’s College. He died at 28;
but his _Life of God in the Soul of Man_ is still greatly prized by
lovers of devotional literature. Dean Ramsay, whose
_Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character_ (1858) is a classic
in humorous literature and one not likely soon to be forgotten, was
born in Aberdeen.
In medical science the roll of eminent names is long and impressive,
from Bannerman, who was physician to David II, down to Arthur
Johnston, who after an academic career abroad, cultivated the
muses at Aberdeen, gaining fame as a writer of Latin verse. He was
for some time physician to Charles I. Born at Caskieben in 1587, he
was rector of King’s College in 1637, and died in 1641. Dr John
Arbuthnot, though a native of Kincardineshire, was a student at
Marischal College; as the friend of Pope and Swift, and the wit and
physician at the Court of Queen Anne, he is likely to be
remembered. Another celebrated physician was Dr John
Abercrombie, who, born in Aberdeen, went to Edinburgh, and
became head of the profession and first physician to the king in
1824. Others no less noted were Sir James Clark; Sir Andrew Clark;
Neil Arnott, a contemporary with Byron at the Grammar School, and
more famous as natural philosopher than as physician, devising
skilful inventions in healing and ventilation; Sir James Macgrigor, to
whose memory a lofty obelisk in polished red granite was erected in
Marischal College quadrangle. After standing there for years it was
recently removed to the Duthie Park. Macgrigor was a pioneer in the
humanitarian treatment of the sick and wounded in war, and was
chief of the Medical Staff in the Peninsular campaigns.
In natural science William Macgillivray is known by his careful and
authoritative work on the _History of British Birds_. James Clerk
Maxwell, who did so much for the advancement of modern Physics,
was for a few years professor of Natural Philosophy in Marischal
College. Dr Alexander Forsyth, minister of Belhelvie, invented the
percussion lock, and Patrick Ferguson, a native of Pitfour, invented
the breech-loading rifle.
The county is remarkable for families with pronounced hereditary
intellectual gifts. The most noted case is that of the Gregories, who
sprang from John Gregory, minister of Drumoak. It has produced
fourteen Professors in British universities, skilled in Mathematics,
Astronomy, Chemistry and Medicine. One of them was the inventor
of the reflecting telescope. The Reids, the Fordyces, the Johnstons
are other cases less remarkable, but still exceptional.
Philosophy is a sphere in which the Aberdonian has left his mark.
The greatest local name in this regard is that of Thomas Reid, who
created the Scottish school in opposition to David Hume, and whose
_Inquiry into the Human Mind on the principles of Common Sense_
was written while he was a Professor at King’s College. Born at
Strachan on the south side of the Dee, he was for a time parish
minister of New Machar. Later he migrated in 1763 to Glasgow, as
successor to Adam Smith. His _Intellectual and Active Powers_ was
written after his retirement in 1780. Other philosophical writers
worthy of mention are, Dr George Campbell, who, besides his
dissertation on _Miracles_, wrote a _Philosophy of Rhetoric_; Dr
James Beattie, whose _Minstrel_ is still read and whose _Essay on
Truth_ had a great contemporary reputation; Dr Alexander Bain, an
analytical psychologist, whose books _The Senses and the Intellect_
and _The Emotions and the Will_ contain the most complete
analytical exposition of the mind. Bain was the first Professor of
Logic at Aberdeen, and in conjunction with his pupil Croom
Robertson started the philosophical Review called _Mind_.
 Professor Thomas Reid, D.D.
The sphere of imaginative literature is not the Aberdonian’s sphere.
Criticism, Philosophy, History, Science are more in his way, and yet a
few names can be given as of some note in pure literature. Foremost
in time and unrivalled in his own department is Barbour, Archdeacon
of Aberdeen (1357). He studied at Oxford, and was contemporary
with Wycliffe and Chaucer. His great work is _The Brus_, the most
national of all Scottish poems. It is instinct with the spirit of freedom,
of chivalry and romance, and details the struggles, the perils, and the
marvellous escapes of his hero Robert the Bruce, with great
simplicity, vividness, and directness. Alongside of him we may place
John Skinner, author of _Tullochgorum_, _The Ewie wi’ the Crookit
Horn_, and other well-known songs. A native of Birse and for long
episcopal minister at Longside, he was the father of Bishop Skinner.
His fame rests on _Tullochgorum_, which Burns pronounced to be
the best of Scotch songs. Dr W. C. Smith, the author of _Olrig
Grange_ and _Borland Hall_, was born and educated in Aberdeen.
Dr George Macdonald, poet, novelist, and critic, author of _Alec
Forbes_ and other novels embodying local colour and illustrating
Aberdeenshire life and dialect in the early part of last century, was a
native of Huntly. The best known poet connected with Aberdeen is
Byron, who spent some years of his boyhood in the city and short
periods of the summer on Deeside. These visits to Ballater are
reflected in his poem on Loch-na-gar and elsewhere in his work. He
left Aberdeen at the age of 10 in 1798 and never saw it again.
History is a subject that has appealed to Aberdonians. Dr David
Masson’s monumental work on Milton must be mentioned. Other
historians are Joseph Robertson, John Stuart, John Hill Burton,
Bishop Burnet, who wrote the _History of his Own Time_, Sir John
Skene, and Robert Gordon of Straloch, antiquarian and map-maker,
as well as his son James, minister of Rothiemay and historian of the
early years of the Troubles. The first Principal of the University,
Hector Boece, wrote histories somewhat credulous and imaginative
but quite authoritative where his own times are concerned.
Of painters connected with the district may be mentioned Jamesone,
Dyce, and Phillip called “of Spain” from his success with Spanish
subjects. Architecture claims Gibbs, whose Radcliffe Library at
Oxford, and London churches such as St Martin’s-in-the-Fields, still
stand a testimony to his art; the Smiths and Archibald Simpson have
already been mentioned. Sculpture owns the two Brodies and Sir
John Steell.
Scholars like Wedderburn and Ruddiman, Cruden of _Concordance_
reputation, Dr James Legge, the Orientalist, and Professor
Robertson Smith, born in the Donside parish of Keig, editor of the
_Encyclopaedia Britannica_, Professor of Arabic at Cambridge, and
one of the most learned pundits of his time—are but a few
representatives of a long list.
The thirst for education and the well-taught parish schools of the
county contributed to bring about such results. The doors of the
University have for centuries been opened by bursaries to the
poorest boys, and in this way many who were endowed with capacity
above ordinary entered the learned professions and rose to
eminence.
 25. THE CHIEF TOWNS AND VILLAGES OF
ABERDEENSHIRE.
(The figures in brackets after each name give the
population in 1911, and those at the end of each section
are references to pages in the text.)
=Aberdeen= (161,952). From being entirely built of granite,
Aberdeen is best known as “The Granite City.” The light grey stone
gives the town a clean look which strikes visitors from cities built of
brick or of sandstone. Its many handsome public buildings, banks,
offices, churches and schools, all solid and substantial, and of great
architectural interest, are undoubtedly finer than those of any other
town of the same size in the kingdom.
The first historical reference to it is in the twelfth century; later a
charter was obtained from King William the Lion, granting the city
certain trading privileges. Long before Edinburgh and Glasgow had
begun to show signs of rising to greatness, Aberdeen was a port of
extensive trade, but its growth was slow until the dawn of the
nineteenth century. In 1801, its population was only 27,608; in 1831
this figure had doubled, and in recent years, owing chiefly to the
phenomenal growth of the fishing industry, its progress has been
rapid.
Aberdeen has long been a great educational centre. Its Grammar
School claims to have existed in the thirteenth century. Its first
University, King’s College in Old Aberdeen, was founded in 1494 by
Bishop Elphinstone, and its second, Marischal College in New
Aberdeen, by Earl Marischal in 1593. These were united in 1860 as
the University of Aberdeen. Since that time the buildings of both
Colleges have been largely added to, and the number of
professorships greatly increased. Its students in the different
faculties, Arts, Medicine, Science, Law and Divinity are little short of
1000.
 The Old Grammar School, Schoolhill
Being the only really large town in the county, and for that matter in
the whole north of Scotland, it tends to grow in importance, and its
business connections are ever extending. It is the focus of the
trawling industry, and of the granite trade; while the agricultural
interests of the county look to Aberdeen as their chief mart and
distributing medium. Its secondary schools, its technical college, its
agricultural college, its University, all help to swell its population by
bringing strangers to reside within its boundaries. In itself it is clean,
healthy and attractively built, while its fairly equable climate, its
relatively low rain-fall (29 inches) and its equally low death-rate (14·2
per 1000) conduce to its popularity as a residential town. Being the
northern terminus of the Caledonian Railway, and having excellent
service to London by the West Coast, the Midland, and the East
Coast routes, it obtains a large share of the tourist traffic; and the
sportsmen who fish in the Aberdeenshire rivers or shoot grouse in
the Aberdeenshire moors must all do more or less homage to the
county town.
The chief street of the city is Union Street created a century ago at a
cost which was considered reckless at the time but which has been
more than justified by the results. This first improvement scheme,
which has been followed up by others in recent times, was the work
of men with a wide outlook. Prominent among the Provosts of
enlightenment was Sir Alexander Anderson, whose name is now at
the eleventh hour stamped in memory by the Anderson Drive—a
fashionable west-end thoroughfare. Union Street is the backbone
from which all the other thoroughfares radiate. It is broad and
handsome and the buildings that face each other across it are as a
rule worthy of the street. Union Bridge, one of Fletcher’s graceful
structures, with a span of 130 feet, makes a pleasing break in the
line of buildings and permits a view north and south along the
Denburn valley. The northern view, which shows Union Terrace and
Union Terrace Gardens with handsome public buildings, both in the
foreground and in the background, is undoubtedly one of the finest in
the city. The Duthie Park on the north bank of the Dee, the links that
fringe the northern coast, the picturesquely wooded amenities of
Donside, above and below Balgownie Bridge, the quaint other world
air of Old Aberdeen with its lofty trees, its grand cathedral and the
ancient crown of King’s College, these are all elevating and
meliorating influences that help to keep in check the commercial
spirit that rules about the harbour-quays and the fish-market.
Aberdeen can boast of four daily newspapers besides several
weeklies. It claims the honour of having the oldest newspaper in
Scotland—_The Aberdeen Journal_—established in 1748. (pp. 3, 8,
11, 13, 20, 24, 37, 38, 39, 66, 68, 75, 80, 83, 85, 89, 91, 92, 94, 95,
101, 102, 107, 108, 109, 111, 126, 145, 162, 164, 165, 169, 172,
173.)
=Aberdour= (549) is a small village on the coast half-way between
Troup Head and Rosehearty. Sometimes called New Aberdour to
distinguish it from the parish, the village came into existence in 1796.
The parish is very ancient. Its church, now in ruins, was dedicated to
St Drostan, the disciple and companion of St Columba. Aberdour is
the birth-place of Dr Andrew Findlater, once Head-master of
Gordon’s Hospital (now College), Aberdeen, and first editor of
Chambers’s _Encyclopaedia_. (pp. 39, 62, 105, 119, 164.)
=Aboyne= (1525), properly called Charlestown of Aboyne in
compliment to the first Earl of Aboyne, is a picturesquely situated
village on Deeside with a high reputation for its bracing climate. Near
it is Aboyne Castle—for centuries the family seat of the Marquis of
Huntly. In the vicinity are Lochs Kinnord and Davan. At Dinnet are
beds of kieselguhr. (pp. 2, 8, 24, 31, 88, 117, 119, 162.)
=Alford= (pa. 1464), on Donside, is the terminus of the branch
railway from Kintore and the centre of a rich agricultural district
called the Vale of Alford. In the neighbourhood are several
interesting castles—Terpersie, Kildrummy and Craigievar. From
Alford the main Donside road leads up the valley to Strathdon and
Corgarff, from which there are passes both to Deeside and to
Speyside. (pp. 27, 71, 113, 115, 134, 160, 162.)
=Ballater= (1240), a small town beautifully situated on the north side
of the river Dee, in a level space enclosed by high mountains, is 660
feet above sea-level. From Ballater coaches drive daily to Braemar,
passing Balmoral Castle half-way. (pp. 2, 8, 18, 24, 27, 33, 154, 162,
164, 176.)
Birsemore Loch and Craigendinnie, Aboyne
 Mar Castle
=Braemar= (502), properly Castleton of Braemar, is the highest
village in the county, being 1100 feet above sea-level. It stands at the
junction of the Clunie and the Dee, and is finely sheltered in a hollow
amongst the surrounding mountains. Braemar is a fashionable
health resort. Some 10,000 strangers visit it annually. At the
beginning of the nineteenth century it was not much more than a
Highland clachan. Now it has