La fièvre des États/America Fever?:
From French Canadians to Franco-Americans (1840-1930)
Migration History Researcher
Museum of Work and Culture
Woonsocket, Rhode Island
Brendan Shanahan
U3 Honours History
McGill University
Montreal, Quebec
I. The Quebec Diaspora
A. 1840 - 1930: A period of French Canadian
demographic growth and migration.
B. Quebec population:
1760 - 70,000
1851 - 892,000
1931 - 2,874,000
C. 1840 - 1930: Many French Canadian habitants
left the traditional Quebec “heartland” of
farms along the St. Lawrence River.
D. French Canadians settled in:
i. Montreal and Quebec City - Industries.
ii. Northern and Northwestern Quebec
- Farming, lumbering, copper and lead mining.
iii. Southeastern and Northern Ontario
- Farming and nickel mining.
iv. Prairie Provinces - Homestead farming.
v. American Midwest and West
- Homestead farming, lumbering, copper, iron
and gold mining.
vi. New England - Cotton, woollen and paper
mills, footwear factories, farming.
- 900,000 French Canadians left for New
England, representing the largest migration.
5. New England Factory - Vernon, CN
1. A French Canadian “Fileuse” (1908)
3. “La Franco-Américanie en 1900”
6. Quebec Advertisement “Restons
chez nous!” (1908)
VI. Race, Ethnicity, and Gender
II. Quebec Emigration Push Factors
A. Demographic Explosion
i. High family birthrates
- not enough farmland to go to all children.
ii. Population increases 400% in 50 years
(occupied farmland only 275%).
B. Farming Difficulties in Quebec
i. Lack of scientific farming methods
(i.e. crop rotation, manure).
ii. Overreliance on staples like wheat.
- failure to transition to dairy, berries.
iii. Farm seasons were short and farmers often
lacked winter employment.
C. Limited Market/Insufficient Trading Network
i. USA implemented stiff tariffs (1866).
ii. Peripheral regions lacked access to markets.
D. Unrelenting Poverty and Debt
i. Farmers struggled to get loans and credit.
E. Insufficient Industrial Employment
i. Montreal and Quebec City did not contain
enough factories to employ all without jobs.
V. Repatriation Efforts
A. “Birds of Passage:” Up to half of French
Canadian migrants never intended to permanently move to USA. These individuals frequently returned to live in Quebec after
amassing sizeable savings in New England.
B. Repatriation: The Catholic Church, Quebec
state and Canadian government attempted to
resettle French Canadians and American-born
Franco-Americans onto ‘new’ farm territory in
northern Quebec and the Prairie provinces.
i. 1857 - Quebec state called emigration “an evil,
a public calamity to be deplored.”
ii. 1875 - Repatriation Act: Quebec allocated
$60,000 for pamphlets, New England tours by
clergymen and the employment of repatriation officers to entice emigrants to return.
iii. 1896-1905 - Société de colonisation et de ra
patriement funded by Canadian government.
C.Repatriation largely fails:
i. Migrants and their children had mostly
become urbanites.
ii. Farm opportunities were often not promising.
(See left for farm in northern Quebec)
2. L’Américaine et la Canadienne (1926) 4. Quebec-New England Railroads (1900) 7. Farm Life in Northern Quebec (1908)
1. “La fileuse” – La Revue Franco-Américaine, 1 juin 1908. L’Institut français du Collège de l’Assomption.
2. “Énergie rédemptrice – destructive” – Almanach de la langue française, 1926, cited in Maurice Poteet (ed.), Textes de l’Exode (Montreal, QC: Guérin, 1987).
3. “La Franco-Américanie en 1900” – Dean Louder and Éric Waddell (eds.),
(Quebec, QC: Université Laval, 1983).
4. “The Québec-New England Borderland Region” – Mark Paul Richard, Loyal, But French (East
Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2008).
III. New England Immigration Pull Factors
A. Proximity: Railroads (the Grand Trunk and the CPR)
connected Quebec to New England’s mill towns.
B. Employment: Factory jobs offered weekly salaries
year-round instead of uncertain farm yields.
C. Higher Comparable Wages: In the 1880s, mills in
Maine and Rhode Island paid up to three times as
much as factories in Montreal and Quebec City.
D. Formal Recruitment: American factory managers
recruited habitants whom they considered “skillful,
conscientious, manageable and little demanding.”
E. Chain Migration: Letters from friends and family in
New England often encouraged migration.
F. Major Destinations: Lewiston, ME; Manchester, NH;
Worcester, Lowell, Fall River, MA; Woonsocket, RI.
5. “Paul Ackerly Mills, Vernon, Conn” – Vernon Historical Society.
6. “Restons chez nous” – La Revue Franco-Américaine, 1 août 1908. L’Institut français du Collège
de l’Assomption.
7. “Un chemin de colonisation” - La Revue Franco-Américaine, septembre-octobre 1908.L’Institut
français du Collège de l’Assomption.
IV. Efforts to Prevent Emigration
A. Elite Arguments against Outmigration:
i. Catholicism “Endangered:” Clerics warned poten
tial emigrants, “qui perd sa langue perd sa foi.”
ii. Patriotism - “Tout véritable Canadien qui a dans
son âme une étincelle de patriotisme devrait repousser avec horreur la pensée d’abandonner sa
patrie” - Bishop Louis-François Laflèche of Trois-Rivières (1864).
B. Emigrants Depicted as Traitors: “How cowardly,
lowly, and despicable are these Canadiens of the
United States, wrapped in their nothingness, and
with ridiculous self-conceit equaled only by their
insignificance.” - La Minerve (Montreal, 1867).
C. Elites Promoted Colonization: Lac Saint Jean, the
western Laurentians, and the Eastern Townships.
A.Victims of Discrimination: Like other immigrants, French Canadians sometimes became
the subjects of nativist stereotypes.
1881 - Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics
labelled French Canadians “The Chinese of the
Eastern States.”
B. Some French Canadians emphasized their
Americanness in contrast to others: “The comparison that one makes of us with the Chinese
is odiously injurious...it places us below a
pagan nation. The Chinese are pagans; we are
Christians.” - Société St-Jean-Baptiste of Ware, MA
C. Gender - Citizenship:
i. Derivative Citizenship - Prior to 1907, the
citizenship status of an immigrant woman
depended upon that of her husband.
ii. 1907-1930s - The citizenship status of all
women was determined by status of their
husbands. American women who married foreigners were liable to lose their citizenship!