the American Civil War, on hearing of the St Albans Raid from Montreal into the US by Confederate soldiers, the school organized a company called the Montreal High School Cadet Rifles. This continued to operate for some twenty years and was disappointed not to be mobilized at the time of the Fenian raids between 1866 and 1871. In September 1870, control of the school was transferred again, this time to the Protestant Board of School Commissioners. Soon after that, J. W. Dawson, principal of McGill, began to press the Protestant Board to create a high school for girls, and in 1875 this came into being as a separate division, with its own "lady principal" and four other teachers, all trained at the McGill Normal School. This was made possible by a local school tax and was the spur for the planning of a new building, opened in 1878. To begin with, the girls' classes had been taught in private houses. The separate girls' school continued to exist in shared buildings until 1965, when for the first time the divisions for boys and girls were united under one principal. The boys' High School provided elementary as well as secondary education, with a junior division called the Preparatory High School. The girls' school did not at first include elementary classes, which came a few years later in the new building, and in 1878 the school population was 241 boys and 226 girls. There was a bitter dispute in the 1880s when the Protestant School Board decided to stop the teaching of Latin in the first two forms and to limit Greek, Algebra, and Geometry to the final two forms. This was opposed by the elderly Rector, Dr Henry Aspinwall Howe, but supported by some parents and staff. On 28 November 1890 the dispute between those who believed in a classical education, including Latin and Greek, and those supporting a greater focus on sciences, culminated in the burning down of the school's building on Peel Street. No cause was ever identified for the fire. Dr Howe, a fierce opponent of a move away from classical languages, quickly tendered his resignation, to take effect from the end of the school year. The successful applicant to replace him, Elson I. Rexford, was English Secretary of the Department of Public Instruction. A new school building was built on the site of the lost one and opened