Apart from provincial and governmental efforts, there were many voluntary experiments, of which Strachan's famous school at Cornwall, was perhaps the most notable. After all, the colonists were { 36} Britons, many of them trained in the Scottish system of national democratic education, and wherever the struggle for existence slackened down, they turned to plan a Canadian system as like as possible to that which they had left. Kingston was notably enterprising in this respect. Not only were there schools for the more prosperous classes, but attempts were made to provide cheap education for the poor, at first supported by the voluntary contributions of ladies, and then by a committee representative of the best Anglican and Presbyterian sentiment. Three of these schools were successfully conducted at very small charges, and, in certain cases, the poorest received education free.[36] In higher education the period of union in Canada exhibited great activity. The generous provision made for a King's College in Toronto had been for a long time stultified by the ill-timed sectarian spirit of the Bishop of Toronto; but a more reasonable temper prevailed after the Rebellion, and the second governor-general of the united provinces, Sir Charles Bagot, spent much of his short time of service in securing professors and seeing the provincial university launched.[37] { 37} At the same time, the two other Canadian colleges of note, M'Gill University and Queen's College, came into active existence. In October, 1839, after many years of delay, Montreal saw the corner-stone of the first English and Protestant College in Lower Canada laid,[38] and in the winter of 1841-2, Dr. Liddell sailed from Scotland to begin the history of struggle and gallant effort which has characterized Queen's College, Kingston, from first to last. It is perhaps the most interesting detail of early university education in Canada, that the Presbyterian College started in a frame house, with two professors, one representing Arts and one Theology, and with some twenty students, very few of whom, however, were "fitted to be matriculated."[39]
It is well to remember, in face of beginnings so irregular, and even squalid, that deficiencies in Canadian college education had been made good by the English and Scottish universities, and that Canadian higher education was from the outset assisted by the genuine culture and learning of the British colleges; for the main sources of university inspiration in British North America { 38} were Oxford and Cambridge, Glasgow and Edinburgh.[40]