A large number of private schools educated the daughters of wealthier Canadians throughout the nineteenth century. While many hoped to equip their students with a basic minimum of culture and morality, some of their graduates were spurred to investigations of higher education, paid employment, and middle-class philanthropy. In the 1880s, however, girls were not given the liberal education that boys of the same age received. As a rule, young ladies were taught the arts and fine arts, whereas schooling for boys leaned towards the sciences, maths, and Greek and Latin. Such discrepancies seemed reasonable in view of the fact that women were neither expected nor encouraged by society to take part in the male oriented workforce.
Courtesy: Notman Photographic Archives, McCord Museum, Montreal
