Quebec diaspora
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Quebec diaspora refers to the hundreds of thousands of people who left the province of Quebec for the United States, Ontario and the Canadian prairies between 1840 and the Great Depression of the 1930s as well as those who began to leave during the 1960s following the Front de libération du Québec terrorism and the election of a Separatist Parti Quebecois government in 1976.
Brought on by overpopulation in rural areas that could not sustain itself under the seigneurial system of land tenure and industrialization in New England, approximately 900,000 residents of Quebec[1] (French Canadian for the great majority) left for the United States seeking work. About half of those are reported to have eventually returned to Quebec.[2] Often those who stayed organized themselves in communities sometimes known as Little Canadas. A great proportion of Americans with French ancestry trace it through Quebec. Certain early American centers of textile manufacturing and other industries attracted significant French-Canadian populations, like Fall River, Holyoke, and Lowell in Massachusetts; Woonsocket in Rhode Island; Manchester in New Hampshire and the bordering counties in Vermont and Maine. There are also sizeable populations of French-Canadian descent in Michigan and Minnesota — who began migrating there when the region was still part of New France.
Contents |
[edit] The second exodus
A second mass exodus, this time by English-speaking Quebecers, occurred in the the years following the acts of terrorism and its culmination in 1970 with the October Crisis and the election in 1976 of the separatist Parti Quebecois government. The 1977 adoption of the Charter of the French Language (Bill 101) transformed Quebec from a traditionally bilingual province into a unilingual French province. The law made anglophone Quebecers feel unwelcome and uncomfortable in a province where they had had roots for several hundred years and where 18th Century English and Scots-Quebecer immigrant entrepreneurs, and their descendants, built the business infrastructure that allowed the province to keep pace with the growth in the new United States and turned Montreal into an economic powerhouse and the finance capital of all Canada. [3] The passage of Bill 101 led to an immediate and sustained exodus of anglophones from Quebec that, according to Statistics Canada (2003), since 1971 saw a drop of 599,000 of those Quebecers whose mother tongue was English. [4]
The largest single benefator of this second outward migration was the city of Toronto, Ontario who would rapidly surpass Montreal as the largest city in Canada and displace it as the country's economic hub. [5]
William Weintraub made the 1993 documentary film The Rise and Fall of English Montreal National Film Board of Canada which dealt with the Quebec diaspora.
The largest proportion of French-Canadians outside of Quebec trace their ancestry to Quebec (except in the Canadian Maritimes, which were settled by the Acadians).
Noteworthy among those whose parents settled in the United States are Jack Kerouac, Robert Goulet and Will Durant.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Bélanger, Damien-Claude (23 August 2000). French Canadian Emigration to the United States, 1840-1930. Québec History, Claude Bélanger, Marianopolis College. Retrieved on January 31, 2007.
- ^ Bélanger, Claude (23 August 2000). Rapatriement. Québec History, Claude Bélanger, Marianopolis College. Retrieved on January 31, 2007.
- ^ [1]. CBC News Broadcast Date: Aug. 26, 1977 and Did You Know? URL accessed on December 6, 2006.
- ^ [2]. CBC Television. The National Broadcast Date: March 2, 1982 and Did You Know? URL accessed on December 6, 2006.
- ^ [3]. National Post November 18, 2006 Quebec exodus to Toronto. URL accessed on December 6, 2006.
[edit] References
- Bélanger, Claude (2001-08-09). Franco-American History (HTML). Québec History, Claude Bélanger, Marianopolis College. Retrieved on January 31, 2007.
- Roby, Yves (2004). Franco-American of New England. Dreams and Realities.. Septentrion, 550 pages. ISBN ISBN 2-89448-391-0.
