Nineteenth-century educational reformers were fond of an agricultural metaphor when it came to the provision of more and better schooling: even good land, they argued, had to be cultiated; othersie noxious weeds sprang up. In this study of education in Ontario from the establishment of Upper Canada to the end of Egerton Ryerson's career as chief superintendent of schools in 1876, Susan Houston and Alison Prentice explore the roots of the provincial...