Introduction
From 1900, when French-Canadian migrants shaped a huge, distinct, harmonized society to 2000, when French-Canadian migrants and their descendants were effectively undetectable, an integration of both, the language and culture of the French-Canadians into the popular language and culture of the United States occurred. The integration occurred on four aspects which were the economic, the social, the religious, and the educational. The four aspects are thoroughly entwined into a complex quagmire.
The French-Canadians in 1900: History and roots
The French in New England commenced their history with the inhabitation on an island in the St. Croix River in June 1604. From there, they examined the south to current-day Boston, and north to current-day Nova Scotia. They structured a permanent settlement in Port Royal, on the north coast of Nova Scotia. The area under discussion was known as La Cadie and is presently referred to as Acadia. La Cadie officially included the land between Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Halifax, Nova Scotia. The original explorers were supposedly Catholic but were actually Protestant Huguenots who changed their faith for political rationale (Rolde, 1990). Most of them were in search of making wealth in the lately exposed world. Later, colonizers who populated both Acadia and
Quebec was by and large devout Catholics, working-class underprivileged who were looking for monetary prospects and a nonviolent situate to nurture their families (Roby, 1990; Wade, 1955).
Generally, the French established amicable relations with the Native Americans, and before long, started to compete economically with the British colonists who dominated to the south. The Acadians instituted trading paths across Maine to Quebec and were a major economic force. Later colonists were chiefly fishermen, farmers, and their kith and kin.
Throughout North America, the French settlers tended to coexist peacefully with the local Indians, and there were many cases of intermarriage between the two groups (Roby, 1990; Wade, 1955). The French in North America perceived themselves as missionaries who were bringing deliverance to their Indian brothers and sisters.
From these initial origins, the French in New England dispersed throughout the northeastern regions of the United States, but they tended to live in very small groups and there were approximately 60,000 people of French-Canadian origin located within the United States. Nearly all were located in the northern states with most of them in New England. A terrible monetary period coupled with political subjugation in Canada forced poor, working-class, and French-Canadian people to immigrate to the mills of New England as emigrant workers. As these emigrant workers returned every year, they brought their family members and began positioning their roots.
Language, Culture, Religion
Former French settlers were bilingual and well educated, but the latter influx was monolingual and poorly cultured. Their church was Roman Catholic and their liturgy was in French brought in from Quebec, rather than in English as in the United States. They were devoted to the French Archbishop of Montreal as a religious leader rather than to the Irish Archbishop of Boston (Paquet, 1913; Roby, 1990; Vedder & Gallaway, 1970; Wade, 1955).
The French-Canadians, who migrated after the American Civil War, constructed many churches and elementary schools and eventually developed a system of narrow-minded education that extended through high school and, in a few cases, college (Paquet, 1913; Paradis, 1964; Quintal, 1990; Roby, 1990; Wade, 1955). Their church buildings were conspicuously bigger and more ornate than the Catholic churches of the English speakers. It was as if there co-existed two different Roman Catholic Churches. Their piloting principles were a sense of duty, nobility, firm effort, and survival. From 1860 to 1900, the French-Canadian immigrants tended to be underprivileged and unqualified and were looking to endure economically.
They spoke French as a primary language and English as a secondary language. The French-Canadians were typically groups of immigrant mill workers with few skills in English. They were virtually monolingual French speakers (Wade, 1955). This deficiency of English skills is a source of economic inequity and social prejudice (Roby, 1990; Rowe, 1999).
The complete family labored to make possible the survival of the family. Children were instructed in parochial schools by French-Canadian nuns in French if parochial schools were available. Or else, there was a high possibility of illiteracy or semi-literacy. When the children were mature enough to officially work, they took their position in the mill together with their family members (Quintal, 1996). If not, they were generally farmhands, working with their families from the time they could walk.
They tended to be defeatist and were old-fashioned, having rural traditions in an urban setting (Langelier, 1996). They were devoted to their family and their religion and not only had an uncommonly strong dedication to duty but also had limited aspirations. They were real people who learned to stay alive with negligible prescribed education. They had traditionally and continually been subordinated to powerful authorities at home, church, school, and work. They had a sense of helplessness in the face of dominant external forces. They were eloquent and humorous people, but only in French. To the external world, they gave the impression of being passive and meek and were accustomed to not cause trouble to anyone (Langelier, 1996).
The nuns had instructed them that pride was the ultimate sin and they were taught to evade struggling for high places. Humbleness and hard work were the characteristics of a superior French-Canadian (Langelier, 1996)). At work, they were ridiculed owing to their amusing enunciation and their submissiveness.
Their language was not real French but was “gutter French”. They had been habituated to be rustic peasants, and now they were living in metropolitan society, fighting for their survival. The most general theme among any stories of the age was survival, ‘la survivance’ (Brault, 1986; Ducharme, 1943; Ham, 1939; Lambert, 1975; Langelier, 1996; Roby, 1990; Wade, 1955).
The major influences in their lives were Catholicism, language, commitment to family and duty, and conservatism taking place from rural descendants. They were the subordinate, working-class poor, who were extremely pioneering and realistic. They were self-righteous of what they could do, but had low ambitions and evaded detection or debate (Langelier, 1996). The French-Canadians in New England were acknowledged as the multi-ethnic immigrant faction that was most opposed to cultural integration in the United States (Roby, 1990).
As the Twentieth Century began, French-Canadians totaled over 500,000 in New England (Roby, 1990). They had erected their own churches and school system. There were seventy-five parochial schools (Quintal, 1990). They labored, shopped, edified, and prayed in French. They were separated into “little Canadas” in each state in New England. They were underprivileged, but starting to ascend the economic ladder (Ducharme, 1943; Roby, 1990). Several were securely instituted in the middle class.
By focusing on ‘la survivance’, they were accomplishing in America without being absorbed into the great melting pot. They stand distant, modest but proud. They had endured and accomplished it on their own terms.
The multitude of French-Canadian immigrants from 1860 to 1900, principally, did not prefer to deal with their culture for social and monetary acceptance in the United States. In the words of Ignatiev, they did not consent to elect to become “white.” They stood apart from the privileged society of American. They were ready to endanger social and economic approval in order to uphold their culture (Brault, 1986; Ducharme, 1943).
They called this ‘la survivance’, and it was the united cry of a nationalist movement that came under attack from nativists and from other competing ethnic groups (Roby, 1990). The White Protestants were in command of the society and economy, and the vast majority of the French-Canadians in America in 1900 were averse to compromising their traditions and absorbing them into “white” American society (Roby, 1990).
The Role of Higher Education
By 1900, there was an extensive, comparatively harmonized system of parish schools that functioned rather separately, edifying French-Canadian children from the first grade to the ninth grade. For the minority that wanted education at the secondary level, a system of classical high schools enveloping grades ten to twelve existed (Roby, 1990).
They trained a traditional moderate arts syllabus and were intended to train male students for high edification as priests or to attend public universities to turn into doctors or lawyers. The elementary schools comprised of, what we now consider elementary and middle school. A grade nine education was regarded as adequate for most male students.
Female students who aspired to study further had to join a convent to receive education as a nurse, teacher, or social service provider (Quintal, 1990). Until a girl had a wealthy parent or sponsor, she had hardly any educational prospects beyond the ninth grade outside of convents. Professional training for boys was accessible through apprenticeships and some public schools (Roby, 1990). The educational institutions were planned to prepare men as priests for rustic and/or educational work and to train women as nuns to manage the schools, hospitals, and social service organizations (Quintal, 1990).
It was culturally acceptable for a man to obtain an education and not choose a profession for the priesthood. He could then go on to a public university to train to be a doctor, a lawyer, or a professor.
For the women, that was not so. A woman who chose not to be a nun was under great societal force to find a husband and to have children (Ducharme, 1943; Langelier, 1996). Single professional women who were not nuns were exceptional. The minority generally came from prosperous families (Roby, 1990).
All through the Twentieth Century, French Catholics developed institutions of advanced education. At first, higher education implied classical high schools or academies.
Later, that incorporated two-year and four-year colleges.
Examples include the ‘Brothers of the Sacred Heart and the Marist Fathers and Brothers (Quintal, 1990).
French-Canadian women’s higher learning prospects were much less superior since they were centered on women helping the social and religious needs of the French-Canadian immigrant populace (Quintal, 1990).
In summing up, the role of higher education in the integration process was mostly to enhance the societal and monetary pressures.
Creative arts
Architecture
The architecture of Quebec is characterized by the concurrence of the old and the novel and a wide variety of architectural styles. Renowned for its religious heritage, Quebec has some notable Roman Catholic churches and 122 religious buildings listed as historical monuments. The best-known ones include Saint Joseph’s Oratory, Mary, and Queen of the World Cathedral, Notre-Dame de Montréal Basilica, and Notre-Dame de Québec Cathedral.
Cinema
The foremost community movie projection in North America took place in Montreal on June 27, 1896. Frenchman Louis Minier presented a movie on a Lumiere cinematographe in a theatre on Saint-Laurent Street. Nevertheless, it was not until the 1960s when the National Film Board of Canada was established and an authentic Quebec cinema industry emerged. Important contributions to world cinema include cinéma vérité and artistic animation.
Circus arts
Quebec has carved a niche for itself in the field of circus arts. The Cirque du Soleil circus group is famous for its creative inventions with rich melodies. Its productions include Varekai, Dralion, Alegría, Corteo, Quidam, Zumanity, Love, and Mystère which are performed on a water platform. It is one of the world’s few circuses with no animal performers. Other internationally successful troupes include Cirque Éloize and Cirque ÉOS.
Cavalia, a horse show, has gained immense popularity. It features both gymnastic and equestrian arts. All the horses are male, most of which are stallions.
Music
Traditional folk music has two main influences, the traditional songs of France, and the influence of Celtic music, with reels and songs that show a definite affinity to the traditional music of Canada’s Maritime Provinces, Ireland, Scotland, and Brittany. Traditional music is becoming increasingly more popular, with the success of groups such as La Bottine Souriante. The Montreal Symphony Orchestra, founded in 1934 is an example of the popularity of traditional music in the Franco-Canadian culture. Many classical music festivals, such as the Festival de Lanaudière, Festival Orford chamber music festival held at the Orford Art Centre.
Jazz music also has a long tradition in the culture. Montreal’s annual Montreal International Jazz Festival attracts millions of visitors each summer.
Visual arts
The Franco-Canadian culture has been for many years a typically rustic society and has a tradition of craft and art which includes the making of stained glass windows, an example of which is the art of Marcelle Ferron.
The popular group is known as Les Automatistes, and its best-known artist, Jean-Paul Riopelle, is perhaps Quebec’s most well-known artist in the world of fine art.
French-Canadian culture to Franco-American culture to Invisible
Economic pressures from lesser labor costs in southern textile mills, massive migration from Quebec during the 1920s, and the resurrection of nativity sentiment throughout the United States donated tremendously to the social pressures to assimilate. The Great Depression and the influx of other ethnic immigrant groups heightened the perceived need to change. New industrial skills were needed; vocational education for men became an urgent requirement (Roby, 1990).
French departed from being a first language to a treasured second language. French-Canadians became Franco-Americans (Brault, 1986). The French-Canadian supporters were sporadically winning small cultural battles, but they were clearly losing the cultural war. Economic and social pressures forced the loss of the French language. The French-Catholic schools, churches, and social clubs were the last citadels of French-Canadian culture. The language war was already lost but nationalists were reluctant to admit that fact.
Conclusion
French-Canadian language and culture have vanished from public awareness. According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 1990 Census, of the 17,143,907 people of French-Canadian descent in the United States, only 1,930,404 claimed to speak French sporadically at home. Rare French speakers represented 0.78 percent of the population of the United States. Only 11.25 percent of Franco-Americans claimed to speak French occasionally.
Schools, where French is taught as a first language, are absent. The closest examples are the elementary schools of Van Buren, Madawaska, St.Agatha, and Frenchville in Maine where there survives a French immersion program that begins in kindergarten. But even there French is taught as a second language. The major difference from ordinary schools is that some subjects are taught in French so as to reinforce the students’ language development. In other words, French is taught as a second language rather than as a foreign language.
Business in the United States occurs mainly in English. In remote areas, one can function in the society speaking only French, but even in those areas, English is overheard as the principal language of accepted communication.
All over New England, it is nearly impossible to find a Catholic Mass said in French. Prayer books found in churches are completely in English. Economic pressures to learn English and social pressures to be American are probably the most obvious and most important reasons for the decline of the French language and culture (Roby, 1990). Nonetheless, higher education, specifically French higher education had a particular role in the termination.
The discriminatory attitude toward North American French that encompassed higher education in both the United States and Canada demoralized the inferior class French-Canadians. French-Canadians were “put down” for their language, their low rank, and their consequential low confidence (Langelier, 1996). The pride of being able to survive was devalued in higher education as unawareness.
The members of higher education who had to deal with language issues were not compassionate to the issues involved with the question of the worth of North American French. The officials are concerned with higher education privileged absorption over patriotic tendencies among French-Canadians.
Whether the Quebec experiment of “separate but equal within Canada” or the innovative Brunswick experiment of “separate but equal within the province” will be more successful over the long term is an interesting question that will be answered over the next few generations.
In higher education, one presently finds cultural studies programs in which language and culture are investigated, authorized and celebrated. If such programs had existed a hundred years ago, the social history of the Twentieth Century would have been extensively dissimilar.
Today, it is achievable and highly desirable for institutions of higher education to value diversity, but, even a casual reading of the popular literature strongly suggests that there are serious labors at demeaning diversity and reinstating the predominance of absolutist norms.
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