Pur laine
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
Please help improve this article or section by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion. This article has been tagged since March 2007. |
The French term pur laine (also rendered as pure laine), literally meaning pure wool (and often interpreted as true blue or dyed-in-the-wool), is a politically and culturally charged phrase referring to the nationalist myth of a "pure French race" being the original ancestors of the French-Canadians.
While many French-Canadians are able to trace their ancestry back to the original settlers of New France, most are descended from intermarriages between the French and Irish settlers, as well as with the Scots and to a lesser extent with the aboriginal peoples. Many English people settled in the region as well and were ultimately assimilated into the francophone civilization, often through intermarriage with the French-Canadians. Such intermarriages continued well into the 19th and early 20th centuries.
For such reasons, the use of this phrase is largely deprecated today and sometimes only heard in the more remote rural towns and villages of Quebec. While not inherently racist or offensive, it is sometimes interpreted as such, as it implies that one is superior to the other, similar to those in the United States who are descended from or who claim descent from the original English settlers of the Mayflower.
[edit] See also
- WASP, the Anglo-Saxon equivalent of pur laine
[edit] Further reading
- Taras Grescoe. Sacre Blues: An Unsentimental Journey Through Quebec. Macfarlane Walter & Ross, 2004. ISBN 1551990814
 |
This Quebec-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
