A visitor to the Settlement in 1854, John Ryerson, says that there were then eight common schools in the country--five of them wholly, or in part, supported by the Church Missionary Society, two of them depending on the bishop's individual bounty, and one only, that attached to the Presbyterian congregation, depending on the fees of the pupils for support.

The Governor and Council of Assiniboia had, a few years before made an appropriation of L130 sterling in aid of public schools.

The Hudson's Bay Company may be said to have given aid to these schools indirectly by making an annual grant to each missionary of an amount varying according to circumstances from L150 to L50 sterling.

The Catholics had similar schools for the French population along the banks of the Red and Assiniboine rivers, and the writer already quoted says that there were seminaries at St.Boniface, one for boys and one for girls, under the Grey Nuns from Montreal.
Bishop Anderson, the first bishop of Rupert's Land, was not specially an educationalist.

He turned his attention more to the evangelical work of the church.