Blake's devastating critiques of boarding schools, attacks he marshaled with the passion of a prosecuting attorney and the precision of an accountant, certainly played into the hands of an Indian Affairs department that was heavily influenced by the Siftonian view of the impracticality of ambitious industrial schooling for Indians.

    Blake was able to enlist the Toronto-based missionary leadership of the Presbyterian and Methodist churches in what was becoming a plan to close a number of Indian boarding schools and to rely instead on day schools on the reserves.

    Major obstacles arose, however, to stop them from carrying their plan to completion. The Roman Catholic bishops and the Oblates who conducted most of the Catholic schools were opposed to the plan to de-emphasize residential schooling. On the whole, their establishments in the west had not experienced as many or as severe problems as the non-Catholic ones had, perhaps because their establishments in the west had not experienced schooling. On the whole, their establishments in the west had not experienced as many or as severe problems as the non-Catholic ones had, perhaps because their access to large numbers of ill-paid or unpaid female religious made it possible to operate Catholic schools with less strain.