Why Feller Closed
Feller College is in difficulty tonight. Educationally (Academically) and as a Christ-centered boarding school we may be thankful for its ministry. Somehow it has not been able to live within its budget, although healthy and functioning in every other way.
1. Purpose of the School.
As conservation as I am, I am not at all interested in building monuments to the past nor of keeping this institution going if time has passed her by and there is neither valid reason for continuing the school for the reasons which brought it into existence or if there are no needs it can meet today.
(a) Feller was founded in 1836 as a French Protestant school, for the purpose of training young men for the evangelization of Roman Catholics in Lower Canada and are prepared to abandon our traditional policy and liquidate our interests here, there is but one course open. That is - the mobilization of greater resources of personnel and money for a well-planned aggressive advance, to re-invigorate our evangelistic programme, to re-establish our French churches and to build a strong Protestant community.. from such young people, given a good secondary education at Feller College, with the highest scholastic standards combined with the spiritual influences that Feller has traditionally sought to contribute, it may be hoped will come the kind of leaders that are so badly needed today for the evangelical work of the mission and the leadership of the French churches. This is not likely to be achieved overnight. It is a long term program but its launching brooks no delay or we shall find it is later than we think.
11. Reasons for the Problem
Although the present principal, the Rev. John Gilmour, was given this as his warrant and has sought to carry this out; The Grande Ligne Mission and possibly the Convention of Ontario and Quebec believes that Feller no longer needs the need of the Mission.
(a) Evidently the school appears to be meeting no specific "G.L. Mission need, serving no valid "Convention purpose".
(b) No longer protects French Protestant children: Pastors of French Churches believe it serves them little.
(c) Although it is doing a more than adequate job as a Christian Residential School in a French Canadian setting. This seems unimportant, for with this as a basis of our plea - the request to continue has been met with inattention or luke-warm interest in the decision making areas of our Convention.
(d) Financing Feller has become a burden. As has been recently discovered there is a considerable bookkeeping and accounting problem to be met. The school has been overspending its budget by 50 %.
111. Possible Solutions.
Feller College must:
(a) Continue to be considered a Mission, that is a non self supporting entity as is our over-seas Mission work, and be subsidized by the Grande Ligne Mission or the Baptist Federation. This solution we are told in OUT! (I think he means "is OUT!" - Rick)
(b) Be given into the hands of an independant Board of Management to whom the property could be leased for a nominal sum - and continue to exist and to serve legitimate timely and Christian needs.
(c) Close its doors as have so many of its sister institutions - as Willard Meldrum wrote in 1956 "The closing of Moulton College and the decision of the United Church to close Pointe-Aux-trembles has left the workerss and supporters of Feller College with the feeling that it might very well happen here."
Rev. Gordon Allan