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It’s difficult to pinpoint the source of the hatred that the McGillicuddy brothers, who edited the Huron Signal, had for Principal Allan Embury but it caused one of the most bitter of feuds in Huron County education history. In 1885, the clash of these strong-willed personalities was waged in the public arena through the county newspapers.
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In December 1883, at a salary of $700 per year, 30-year-old Allan Embury, a mathematics teacher from Brockville, was hired among a field of 11 candidates by the Goderich School trustees to be the new principal of the Central School. In addition to his teaching duties, Embury oversaw the management of the satellite schools in the St. Patrick’s, St David’s and St Andrew’s wards. He also instructed the teenage candidates of the Model School who were in training for a teaching certificate. Initially, The Signal welcomed his wife, Fanny, and their three sons to Goderich.
Yet, Embury soon announced himself a ‘wet’ Tory, which seemed to raise the ire of the Daniel and Thomas McGillicuddy, the ‘dry’ and Liberal editors of The Huron Signal. At a debate at the Goderich Temperance Hall, in May 1884, Embury argued that prohibition was impractical and a restriction on civil liberties. Although the not unbiased judges deemed that Embury lost the argument, The Clinton New Era said that he “gave the best speech on that side of the question” and praised for his “flowery manner” of speech. One of Embury’s debating opponents was Thomas McGillicuddy, co-editor of The Signal and a school trustee who loudly disapproved of both Embury’s politics and views on temperance.
Principal Embury also intended on running his schools his way. The Signal reported that Embury planned “to introduce into the schools a system of uniformity in teaching which does not obtain at present.” Whatever gifts Embury had as an educator, tact or deference was not one of them. In December 1884, Embury ran afoul of J. R. Miller, the county school inspector, when he insisted on setting and marking the promotion exams himself. Embury announced to the trustees, that Miller was “not qualified to perform such duty.”
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In a heated three-sided exchange amongst the trustees, Inspector Miller and Principal Embury, the matter was referred to the Department of Education, which sent it back to the trustees for a decision. In the end, “knowing the difficulty in working jointly with Mr. Embury,” Miller allowed Embury to prepare the June exams but the inspector would mark the Christmas ones. It was an arrangement that invited trouble.
In January 1885, Inspector Miller submitted his much anticipated annual report to a special meeting of the trustees. At a packed board meeting, Embury’s fate as a school principal was to be determined. Rumours had circulated in The Signal that Miller was going to recommend that Principal Embury be terminated for the poor performance of students at the Christmas exams. In his report, Miller found that only 12 of 64 Goderich senior grade students passed the exam that he had marked, compared with eight of 10 of the students at the Exeter school.
Miller blamed the abysmal results on “the difficulty of the papers set by Mr. Embury” and reported that the Christmas exam results had “shown his [Embury’s] incompetency.”
Miller’s scathing report concluded “by his profane language, his misrepresentations and threats to trustees and others, that he [Embury] is not a proper person to be principal of any public school.”
Miller directly questioned Embury’s professional ability.
The Signal, which Embury rightly suspected of putting Miller up to the damning report, heartily endorsed the Inspector’s report under the headline “Change Needed.”
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If anyone thought that Embury meekly resign and go away, they were sorely mistaken. Principal Embury had a combative nature. Rather than submitting to the inspector’s report and The Signal’s bullying, Principal Embury launched into an aggressive defence. Embury read a rebuttal to the inspector’s report at the special meeting but, according to Trustee Thomas McGillicuddy (and reporter for The Signal) was asked to withdraw his statement because it was “of a very abusive character.”
At that point, Miller thought he had won his point when he pointed at Embury claiming that “I have got what I want now and you can’t help yourself.”
At the same board meeting, it was learned that in an effort to discredit the principal, Trustee McGillicuddy approached “a young girl” in Embury’s class asking her if she had ever seen him drunk. The girl denied that he was ever not in a fit condition” to teach. Not surprisingly, The Signal approved of Trustee McGillicuddy’s actions in dragging a young girl into the controversy because McGillicuddy wrote the story.
Embury launched a powerful public offensive in the local Tory papers, The Goderich Star and Huron News Record. The Signal called Embury’s letters the “ravings of an educated Blackguard” which stemmed from an ‘erratic, unbalanced mind.” Embury was dismissed as a ‘scribbling pedagogue” who had “developed into a public nuisance.”
Indeed, a reading of Embury’s letters demonstrate that discretion often failed him. In one open letter addressed to Thomas McGillicuddy in October 1885, Embury called The Signal “a cesspool of social disturbance.” Further, McGillicuddy’s “cowardly and insolent, arrogant and ignorant” character was not fit “to grace a Papuan orgy.” For good measure, Embury added that “mass of fungus” that passed for McGillicuddy’s brain “excreted the meanest spawn of Hell.” It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the two men deeply detested one another.
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However, Embury was capable of clear, rational thought in rebutting the charges that Miller and The Signal had leveled at him. Embury said the exam results were lower in Goderich than Exeter because it was the practice at the Exeter school to only send up students for examination who could pass whereas Embury allowed all students to take the exams. Embury asked why the inspector passed students in Seaforth with lower test scores than the Goderich students? In another case, could the inspector not have found three marks that a Goderich student needed to pass on her history exam? It was evident to the trustees and public that the inspector used the Goderich students as pawns in his vendetta against Embury.
Aside from the Tory press, who thought Embury was a victim of partisan politics, Embury had defenders. Jean Sharman, who taught at the Central School from 1880-1935, commended him for his school management. Embury gave to his model school candidates excellent teaching advice in advising them that “pupils should do the most talking” and that “teachers should have a large amount of sympathy.” Despite Embury’s difficult personality, he was a talented teacher. Gradually, even The Signal begrudgingly conceded fault on both sides.
After 18 months of bitter invective directed at each other, Thomas McGillicuddy through The Huron Signal held out the prospect of a truce. In June 1886, McGillicuddy, in a back-handed compliment, took credit for “leading the schoolmaster to a more steady walk, a more sober and upright behaviour, and the use of cleaner language” that had helped his “reformation” into a respectable member of society and invited Embury to a mutual ceasefire in the letter writing campaign.
As no further letters appeared on either side in the papers, it seemed the doves of peace had finally descended on Goderich schools.
Inspector Miller was driven from his position by the end of 1885 for his role in trying to oust Principal Embury.
Thomas McGillicuddy left The Signal in 1887 for a Liberal patronage appointment as the provincial Ministry of Agriculture’s printer.
Principal Embury continued as principal until November 1888 when he accepted a position as Inspector of Schools in Brampton.
School principal waged battle against Goderich newspaper - Clinton News Record
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