In A Meeting of the People Roderick MacLeod and Mary Anne Poutanen look at the Protestant public education system and the communities that established, and were served by, its schools, from the origins of public education in 1801 to the dissolution of confessional school boards in 1998. They focus on key issues such as class, ethnicity, religion, gender, health and welfare, patriotism, and the nature of local administration, bringing to life the people who attempted to establish and maintain schools and considering relationships between school trustees, parents, teachers, and the wider public. Their analysis shows that communities recognized the importance of providing schooling, despite what were often bleak circumstances. The authors show that Protestant families often had to make a difficult choice between supporting better educational facilities in a central place far away or encouraging the survival of the local community through maintaining one of its key institutions, the local school. They explore the ambiguous nature of Protestant education, at times understood as schooling reserved for a religious minority and at others as a liberal approach similar to public schooling across North America. The Protestant community, begun as a British element within a small colony, has developed into a diverse array of people from across the religious spectrum, periodically redefining itself to meet the needs of a changing Quebec society.

Rod Macleod, Professor Emeritus, was professor of History and Classics at the University of Alberta from 1969 until he retired in 2005. During his tenure he served as Chair of the Department of History and later as Association Dean of Arts. He has written extensively on the history of Western Canada as well as Canadian legal and military history. His books include The Mounties and Prairie Fire: The 1885 North West Rebellion as well as The North West Mounted Police and Law Enforcement 1873-1905. Rod is the official historian for the University of Alberta. In that capacity he researched and wrote All True Things: A History of the University of Alberta, 1908 - 2008, published by the University of Alberta Press. He served two terms as the Alberta representative on the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada. Currently (2011) Rod serves on the Board of the Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme and he is the Curator of the Alberta Aviation Museum.

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Mary Anne Poutanen teaches in the Department of History at Concordia University, in the Programme d'études sur le Québec at McGill University, and at the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada.

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