(Redirected from French-Canadians)
'French Canadians' are a
cultural group and ethnolinguistic
nation which originated in
Canada, New France, a former
French colony along the
St. Lawrence River in what is today southern
Quebec in
Canada. The French Canadians, together with the
Acadians, constitute the two main French-speaking populations of modern-day
Canada. French Canadians and Acadians also comprise a large portion of the
Franco-American population in the
United States.
During the mid-18th century, settlers born in French Canada colonized other parts of North America in what are today the states of
Louisiana,
Mississippi,
Missouri,
Illinois, the
Windsor-Detroit region and the
Canadian prairies (primarily Southern
Manitoba).
Between the 1840s and the 1930s, some 900,000 French Canadians emigrated to the
New England region. About half of them returned home. The generations born in the United States would eventually come to see themselves as
Franco-Americans. During the same period of time, numerous French Canadians also emigrated and settled in Eastern and Northern
Ontario. The descendants of those Quebec immigrants constitute the bulk of today's
Franco-Ontarian community.
Celine Dion, a native French Canadian, is arguably the most famous French Canadian in the world. She has sold over 220 million albums worldwide and has been labelled: "The Best Selling Female Artist Of All Time."
Origin of Name
The French Canadians get their name from ''Canada'', the most developed and densely populated region of
New France. The original use of the term ''Canada'' referred to the land area along the
St. Lawrence river, divided in three districts (Québec, Trois-Rivières, and Montréal), as well as to the ''Pays d'en Haut'' (Upper Countries), a vast and weakly settled territorial dependence North and West of Montreal which covered the whole of the
Great Lakes area.
At the end of the 17th century, the French word ''Canadien'' became an
ethnonym distinguishing the inhabitants of Canada from those of France. From 1535 to the 1690s however, it referred to the Amerindians the French had encountered in the St. Lawrence River valley at
Stadacona and
Hochelaga [1]. Those Amerindians are today called the
St. Lawrence Iroquoians by anthropologists who try to understand the reason for their disappearance.
Population
People who today claim some French Canadian ancestry or heritage number some 7 million in Canada and 2.4 million people in the United States. (An additional 8.4 million Americans claim French ancestry; they are treated as a separate ethnic group by the
U.S. Census Bureau.)
In Canada, 85% of French Canadians reside in
Quebec where they constitute the majority of the population in all regions except the far North. Most cities and villages in this province were built and settled by the French or French Canadians during the French colonial rule.
There are various urban and small centres in Canada outside of Quebec that have long-standing populations of French Canadians, going back to the late 19th century.
Eastern and
Northern Ontario have large populations of francophones in communities such as
Ottawa,
Cornwall,
Hawkesbury,
Sudbury,
Welland,
Timmins and
Windsor. Many also pioneered the
Canadian Prairies in the late 18th century, founding the towns of
Saint Boniface, Manitoba and
Peace River, Alberta.
In the United States, many cities were founded as colonial outposts of
New France by French or French Canadian explorers. They include
New Orleans, Louisiana;
Mobile, Alabama;
Coeur d'Alene, Idaho;
Belleville, Illinois;
Dubuque, Iowa;
Detroit, Michigan;
Biloxi, Mississippi;
St. Louis, Missouri;
Creve Coeur, Missouri and
Provo, Utah.
The majority of the French Canadian population in the United States is found in the New England area. Quebec emigrants settled in industrial cities like Waltham,
Lowell,
Lawrence, and
New Bedford in
Massachusetts;
Woonsocket in
Rhode Island;
Manchester and
Nashua in
New Hampshire; and
Biddeford and
Lewiston in
Maine. Smaller groups of French Canadians settled in the Midwest, notably in the state of
Michigan.
Language
The
varieties of French spoken by Francophone Canadians are called
Quebec French,
Acadian French, and
Newfoundland French. The French of Ontario, the Canadian West, and New England all originate from Quebec French and do not constitute distinct varieties from it, unlike Acadian French and Newfoundland French. When they are native English speakers, French Canadians speak either
Canadian English or
American English.
In Quebec, about six million French Canadians are native French speakers. The other one million are English-speaking. In the United States, assimilation to the English language was more important and very few Americans of French Canadian ancestry or heritage speak French today.
Six million of Canada's native French speakers, of all origins, are found in the province of Quebec, where they constitute the majority language group, and another one million are distributed throughout the rest of Canada. Roughly 31% of Canadian citizens are French-speaking and 25% are of French-Canadian descent. Not all French speakers are of French descent, and not all people of French-Canadian heritage are exclusively or primarily French-speaking.
In Canadian provinces other than Quebec, francophones have enjoyed
minority language rights under the
Canadian Constitution since 1982, protecting them from provincial governments that have historically been indifferent or downright hostile towards their presence.
Religion
Because France forbade non-Catholic settlement in
New France from 1629 onward, almost all French settlers of
Canada were
Roman Catholic. In the United States, some French Catholics have converted to
Protestantism. Until the
1960s, religion was a central component of French Canadian national identity. The Church parish was the focal point of civic life in French Canadian society, and monastic orders ran French Canadian schools, hospitals and orphanages. During the
Quiet Revolution of the 1960s, however, the practice of Catholicism dropped drastically. Church attendance in Quebec currently remains low. Rates of religious observance among French Canadians outside Quebec tend to vary by region, and by age. In general, however, those in Quebec are the least observant, while those in the United States and other places far from Quebec tend to be the most observant.
Identities
Over the course of many centuries, the cultural identity of the people of French Canadian ancestry or heritage has evolved greatly.
Canada
Since the 1960s, French Canadians in Quebec have generally used ''
Québécois'' (masculine) or ''Québécoise'' (feminine) to express their cultural and national identity, rather than ''Canadien français''. Francophones who self-identify as Québécois and do not have French Canadian ancestry may not identify as "French Canadian" (or ''Canadien français''). Those who do have French or French Canadian ancestry, but who support
Quebec sovereignty, often find ''Canadien français'' to be archaic or even pejorative. This is a reflection of the strong social, cultural, and political ties that most Quebeckers of French-Canadian origin, who constitute a majority of
francophone Quebeckers, maintain within Quebec. It has given
Québécois an ambiguous meaning which has often played out in political issues, as all public institutions attached to the Quebec state refer to all Quebec citizens, regardless of their language or their cultural heritage, as Québécois.
The identities of French Canadians outside Quebec have also evolved. Following the example of Quebec, they have begun to rename themselves according to their respective provinces:
★ Franco-Terreneuvians, province of
Newfoundland and Labrador
★
Franco-Ontarians, province of
Ontario
★
Franco-Manitobans, province of
Manitoba
★
Fransaskois, province of
Saskatchewan
★
Franco-Albertans, province of
Alberta
★
Franco-Columbians, province of
British Columbia
★ Franco-Yukonnais, territory of
Yukon
★
Franco-Tenois, territory of
Northwest Territories
★ Franco-Nunavois, territory of
Nunavut
Unlike the situation in Quebec, French Canadians outside Quebec often identify both as "French Canadian" ''and'' with their provincial grouping. Identification with provincial groupings varies from province to province, however — Franco-Ontarians, for example, use their provincial label far more frequently than Franco-Columbians do. A significant minority identify ''only'' with the provincial groupings, explicitly rejecting "French Canadian" as an identity label.
United States
The French Canadians who emigrated en masse to the
United States between the 1840s and the 1930s came to identify as
Franco-American, especially those who were born American and could not identify as Canadians, whatever the meaning given to it.
Because distinctions between French Canadian, Acadian, and French of France is blurred to native English speakers who have no extensive knowledge of French language cultures, especially outside Canada, Franco-Americans is a term which often designated all people of French ancestry or heritage in the USA only. In ''L'avenir du français aux États-Unis'',
Calvin Veltman finds that since Canadian French has been so widely abandoned in the United States, the term "French Canadian" is there understood in ethnic rather than linguistic terms.
History
The
French were the first Europeans to permanently colonize what is now
Quebec, parts of Ontario, Acadia, and select areas of Western Canada, all in Canada (See
French colonization of the Americas.) Their colonies of
New France (also commonly called Canada) stretched across what today are the
Maritime provinces, southern Quebec and
Ontario, as well as the entire
Mississippi River Valley.
The first permanent European settlement in Canada was at
Port Royal in 1605. The territories of New France were
Canada,
Acadia, and
Louisiana. The inhabitants of Canada called themselves the ''Canadiens'', and came mostly from northwestern France.
[2];
Many French Canadians are the descendants of the
King's Daughters of this era.
The inhabitants of Acadia, or ''Acadiens'', came from Southwestern France; the inhabitants of Louisiana called themselves ''Louisianais''.
During the mid-18th century, French explorers and ''Canadiens'' born in French Canada colonized other parts of North America in what are today the states of
Louisiana,
Mississippi,
Missouri,
Illinois,
Vincennes, Indiana, the
Windsor-Detroit region and the
Canadian prairies (primarily Southern
Manitoba).
After the 1760 British conquest of New France in the
French and Indian War, the French-Canadian population remained important in the life of the colonies.
The British gained Acadia by the
Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 and in 1755, the beginning of the French and Indian War, deported 75% of the Acadian population to other British colonies and France itself. The French Canadians escaped this fate in part because of the capitulation act that made them British subjects. It took the 1774
Quebec Act for them to regain the French civil law system, and in 1791 French Canadians in
Lower Canada were introduced to the British
parliamentary system when an elected
Legislative Assembly was created.
The Legislative Assembly having no real power, the political situation degenerated into the
Lower Canada Rebellion of 1837–1838, after which Lower Canada and
Upper Canada were unified. One of the motivations for the union was to limit French Canadian political power. After many decades of British immigration, the ''Canadiens'' became a minority in the
Province of Canada in the 1850s.
French-Canadian contributions were essential in securing
responsible government for
The Canadas and in undertaking
Canadian Confederation. However, over the course of the late 19th and 20th centuries, French Canadians' discontent grew with their place in Canada. (See
Quebec,
History of Canada and
Politics of Canada.)
Between the 1840s and the 1930s, some 900 000 French Canadians emigrated to the
New England region. About half of them returned home. The generations born in the United States would eventually come to see themselves as
Franco-Americans. During the same period of time, numerous French Canadians also emigrated and settled in Eastern and Northern
Ontario. The descendants of those Quebec immigrants constitute the bulk of today's
Franco-Ontarian community.
Since 1968, French has been one of Canada's two official languages. It is the sole official language of Quebec and one of the official languages of
New Brunswick, the
Northwest Territories, and
Nunavut. The
dialects of French spoken in Canada are quite distinct from those of France. See
French in Canada.
Modern usage
In English usage, the terms for provincial subgroups, if used at all, are usually defined solely by province of residence, with all of the terms being strictly interchangeable with French Canadian. Although this remains the more common usage in English, it is considered outdated to many Canadians of French descent, especially in Quebec. Most francophone Canadians who use the provincial labels identify with their province of ''origin'', even if it isn't the province in which they currently reside; for example, a Québécois who moved to Manitoba would ''not'' change their own self-identification to Franco-Manitoban.
Increasingly, provincial labels are used to stress the linguistic and cultural as opposed to ethnic and religious nature of French-speaking institutions and organizations. The term "French Canadian" is still used in historical and cultural contexts, or when it is necessary to refer to Canadians of French-Canadian collectively, such as in the name and mandate of a national organizations which serve minority francophone communities across Canada. Francophone Canadians of non-French-Canadian origin such as immigrants from francophone countries are not usually designed by the term "French Canadian"; the more general term "francophones" is used for French-speaking Canadians across all ethnic origins.
Organizations
National
★
Fédération culturelle canadienne-française (French Canadian Cultural Federation)
★
Association canadienne-française pour l'avancement des sciences (French Canadian Association for the Advancement of Sciences)
★
Fédération de la jeunesse canadienne-française (French Canadian Youth Federation)
French-Canadian flags
Notes
1. Gervais Carpin, Histoire d'un mot. ''L'ethnonyme Canadien de 1535 Ã 1691''
2. G. E. Marquis, Louis Allen, The French Canadians in the Province of Quebec
References
★
''Map displaying the percentage of the US population claiming French Canadian ancestry by county'', United States Census Bureau, Census 2000
★
The People of New France. (Themes in Canadian History Series), , Greer, Allan, University of Toronto Press, ,
★
The French Canadians in the Province of Quebec, , G. E., Marquis, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science,
★
The French-Canadian Heritage in New England, , Gerard J., Brault, University Press of New England, ,
★
The First Franco-Americans: New England Life Histories from the Federal Writers' Project, 1938-1939, , C. Stewart, Doty, University of Maine at Orono Press, ,
★
Ethnic Identity: The Case of the French Americans, , James Hill, Parker, University Press of America, ,
★
French America: Mobility, Identity, and Minority Experience across the Continent, , Dean R., Louder, Louisiana State University Press, ,
See also
★
Canuck
★
Speak White
★
Quebecois
★
Quebec
★
History of Quebec
★
Culture of Quebec
★
Politics of Quebec
★
Quebec French
★
Quiet Revolution
★
French (ethnicity)
★
Acadian,
Franco-Albertan,
Franco-Columbian,
Franco-Manitoban,
Franco-Ontarian,
Fransaskois,
Franco-Tenois
★
French in the United States
★
French American
★
Pur laine
External links
★
Online edition of the ''Dictionnaire généalogique des familles canadiennes'', 1871 genealogy dictionary concerning New France by abbot
Cyprien Tanguay
★
Online edition of the ''Dictionnaire des auteurs de langue française en Amérique du Nord'', 1989 dictionary of North America's French language authors by
Réginald Hamel,
John Hare et
Paul Wyczynski
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