This Paper examines state support for religious and independent school in Canadian provinces, schools which most frequently evolved out of the desires of religious minorities to control their own schools. Education is under solely provincial jurisdiction in Canada, there is no federal ministry of education, and there has been repeated waves of substantial immigration - making the country an ideal laboratory for investigating questions of path dependency and immigrant integration through school governance. Although education systems in Canada's provinces share many other features, four distinctive ways of accommodating calls for the state support of independent and religious schools have evolved across the country. Using a mix of small 'n' comparative methods and process tracing, we examine the reasons for the divergence in how governments organize the governance of these schools. It pays particular attention to the moments when policy windows opened sufficiently for minority groups to lobby for state support for their schools and how, in turn, this support became an entrenched part of the education landscape in some provinces.
