The Question, from a divisive moment in Canadian
Should Manitoba, by 1890 a largely Anglophone Protestant region of Canada, continue to support two sets of schools, one English Protestant; and one French Catholic, as required in the Manitoba Act of 1870?
To this Gordian Knot
, there seemed to be no solution.
Today it doesn't seem like much. At the time, however, radicals seized the political agenda and polarized the young nation. Citizens of Quebec
sympathized with the French minority in Manitoba (a province that had seen massive immigration of English Canadians). English Orangemen
felt no need to pay extra taxes to prop up Catholic
schooling, even if it was a prerequirement for entry into Canada
In 1896, Prime Minister Mackenzie Bowell
resigned from office for his support of Catholic
schooling. He was briefly replaced by Sir Charles Tupper
, who also couldn't fix the problem and in turn was replaced by Sir Wilfrid Laurier
, Canada's first French
At last, Laurier was able to effect a compromise, and was able to calm the acrimony that the Question had sown between regions of Canada