Yes, There Was A Conquest

It is a war with three names. For some it is the Seven Years War. In the USA it is the French and Indian War. For the Québécois it’s often known as the War of the Conquest. That this 18th century war entailed the conquest of Québec by the English forces, that left the Canadiens a conquered people, is a founding narrative for many of those we now know as the Québécois.

However, in recent years there has been some pushback, mainly from Anglophone Quebeckers, who claim that in fact there was no such Conquest. In a March 2016 article in the Montreal Gazette by Celine Cooper, calling for an overhaul of the history curriculum in Québec schools, Cooper epitomizes this revisionist view. She characterizes the events of 1763 as "the abandonment of New France by the French monarch and its surrender to the English." 

This sentence reframes a military conquest in passive terms. The agency is given to the French Crown rather than to the conquering English. It’s not the English who take the initiative to conquer the colony, but rather the French who "abandon" it, despite the fact that they had held it for the better part of a century and a half. It makes it seem as if France simply faded away without firing a shot. 

Some years ago, Brian McKenna’s film Battlefield Quebec: Wolfe and Montcalm was an extended treatment of the revisionist view. In a preview of the film in the Globe and Mail, McKenna announced a new discovery. He claimed that a few days before the climactic battle on the Plains of Abraham, General Wolfe “[wrote] out the terms of Quebec's capitulation in the event of a British victory, terms which centered on the protection of French institutions, notably the French language and the Catholic Church.”

But McKenna’s argument contradicts itself. Who dictates terms of surrender but a conqueror? Assuming McKenna is correct that Wolfe’s overtures were beneficent, the fact that Wolfe anticipated giving his terms to a defeated city tends to prove the opposite of what McKenna's revisionist thesis contends.

And the revisionist view must also account for other, far less conciliatory words that Wolfe addressed to the Canadiens in 1759 as his flotilla made its way toward destiny: “If by vain obstinacy and a misguided courage [the Canadien civilians] want to take up arms, they must expect the most lethal consequences; their habitations will be pillaged, their churches exposed to an exasperated soldiery, their harvests completely destroyed, and this most formidable fleet will prevent them from having any relief.”¹ If these aren't the words of a conqueror then what are?

Québec City, 1759:
But don't call it a conquest!

Getting Real About History

Whatever name we give this mid-18^th c. conflict, it entailed warfare in N. America involving tens of thousands of combatants. Wolfe’s fleet in 1759 alone included 30,000 sailors and 9000 soldiers.² After years of warfare, the British forces sailed up the river that year with purpose. The colony’s political capital was taken and its commercial capital, Montréal, surrendered into the hands of the looming British military. Although fighting continued after that, the war was won for the British and lost for the French and the Canadiens when it was British rather than French ships that were seen coming over the horizon in the Spring.

In the negotiations following the hostilities, France opted to negotiate the return of the Caribbean islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe, which Britain had taken from France, while she ceded her claim to Canada to the English. The decision to cede Canada was made as a result of strategic and/or economic calculations on both sides of the treaty negotiations. The British dealt from a position of strength since their military held the country. 

The notion that there was no Conquest does violence to history because it ignores the considerable pains the English had taken to seize the colony by force and it ignores the bargaining position that their military posture gave them. It also papers over the loss of life (about 10% of the Canadiens were killed) and property damage involved in that war. In fact it argues that the prolonged period of warfare was simply inconsequential since, revisionists pretend, the power was in the hands of the French who opted to “abandon” the colony.

Gaslighting the Québécois

In summary, there was warfare in N. America over a period of years; the capital of the colony of Canada was taken by force; there was an occupation; there was a military government; and there was what we now call “regime change.” And it was permanent. The British monarch is still officially the Queen of Canada. If that’s not a conquest then we’re equivocating on the meaning of the word. Invariably, Orwellian equivocations serve a political agenda.

The agenda here is clear. The revisionist view is intended to undermine Francophone Québec's sense of itself as a distinct society. It attempts to establish that the Québécois were always on an equal footing with their British-descent countrymen and it suggests that there was always a perfectly level playing field between the two groups. 

Another reason for the revisionism is that the Québécois do not fit prevailing N. American racial narratives. The Québécois are in the anomalous position in North America of being a white-identified people who had been subjugated by another white-identified people. In this, they resemble the Irish.

Even if the British conquest of Canada were the most benign conquest in the history of the world, to be conquered and occupied by a foreign power is humiliating and traumatic. In all such cases, the conquerors hold the cards and the conquered have no choice but to submit to their fate be it benevolent or the opposite. Today, the descendants of the conquered Canadiens face the further humiliation of having their historical memories, a memory of cultural survival and eventual prosperity in the face of defeat, denied by the revisionists.

And, no, the point is not to wallow in victimization regarding events that happened long ago. It's about telling the truth and understanding the basis on which Québec's sense of collective self rests. The narrative that today's Québécois are the descendants of survivors of the Conquest is justified by the historical facts. Revisionists must not succeed in manipulating history.

In psychology there is a term for such manipulations: gaslighting. This is a form of psychological abuse where one person causes another to doubt their perception of reality through manipulation, distortion and denial. It is time for the historical revisionists to stop gaslighting the Québécois. It is time they faced up to the past as it really was and not as their political counter-agenda wishes it to have been.

---------------------------

Notes

¹ Lamonde, Yvan. Histoire Social des Idées au Québec 1760-1896. Montréal: Editions Fides, 2000. Print. Cf. p 18. [The translation from the French is my own.]

² Havard, Gilles and Cécile Vidal. Histoire de l'Amérique française. Paris, Flammarion, 2003. Print. Cf. p 442.

Picture credit

A. Bennoist, engraver, after Richard Short (fl. 1754-1766), A View of the Church of Notre Dame de la Victoire, built in Commemoration of the raising the Siege in 1695 and destroyed in 1759. Hand-colored copperplate engraving. London, 1761. Graphics Division, Prints B-7.

New hashtag #AmFr Promotes French North America

I have been approached by an informal group of writers, bloggers, and artists who are promoting a new hashtag: #AmFr – Amérique Française or French North America.

The intention behind this new hashtag is to have a means of cataloging, finding and linking writings of interest to Amérique Française across all current international, state or provincial borders.

This approach is consistent with my interest in raising awareness, both within our cultures and outside of them, of what I have called les Enfants de la Nouvelle-France (the children of New France). I coined this term to include all of the descendants of the French 17th and 18th century colonial possessions in North America wherever they now live and whatever language they now speak.

In this context, I use the term Nouvelle-France in the broad sense in which it embraces all of the former French Colonial settlements in North America including l'Acadie, le Canada (including the St. Lawrence Valley and le Pays d'en haut), and la Louisiane (both Basse- and Haute-Louisiane) and all of their diasporas and extensions.

By this definition, the term les enfants de la Nouvelle-France may include (but is not limited to) those who self-identify as:

• Québécois(e) 
• Acadien(ne)
• Créoles throughout the former French la Louisiane 
• Cadien(ne)s/Cajuns 
• The Acadian diaspora in Canada outside of the Eastern Provinces 
• French-Canadians in today's Canada and the USA which includes Franco-Ontarians, Franco-Manitobans, Fransaskois, etc. and also those who continue to describe themselves as French-Canadians in the U.S. Midwest and West 
• Franco-Americans in New England and New York with origins in both Québec and Acadie 
• Francophone and Franco-gene Métis 

I am quick to point out that the intent of the #AmFr hashtag is not to minimize the uniqueness of any of these cultures but to promote a greater understanding and communication between different groups that share a common historical root.

The promoters of the #AmFr hashtag intend it as a means of creating an alternative Franco media. This media will not operate from the top down but from the bottom up. There will be no editorial board setting policy, but the impetus will come from the writers and bloggers themselves.

If you are a blogger or participate in social media, we would like to encourage you to use the hashtag #AmFr to flag content that fits the description above.

Une Culture Hors-Contexte / A Culture Out of Context: An Interview

Vous trouverez ci-dessous un lien vers l'émission "A Million Friends" dans laquelle j'ai discuté de mon expérience comme Franco-Américain vivant en Nouvelle-Angleterre. Comment fonctionne l'assimilation culturelle ? Qu'est-ce que cela signifie d'avoir une culture qui est hors-contexte ?

Au cours de cet entretien (en anglais), vous m'entendrez parler d'histoire, répondre à des questions personnelles et chanter.

Bonne écoute!
A Million Friends With Josh Cole

Below please find a link to the podcast "A Million Friends" where I am interviewed by Josh Cole. I discuss my experience as a Franco-American from New England. How does cultural assimilation work? What does it mean to have a culture out of context?

In this interview you will hear me speak of history, respond to some personal question, and play a little music with Josh.

Happy listening!

A Million Friends With Josh Cole

Message d’un Franco-Américain aux Québécois

Un francophone de l’Ouest canadien de longue date s’inquiétait récemment de l’anglicisation accélérée du Québec ces dernières années. Il nous faisait part de cette pression grandissante de devenir bilingue pour réussir. Les jeunes perçevraient l’anglais comme plus moderne, le français comme ringard. Plus d’argent du côté anglais, mieux vaut s’éduquer, publier et transiger en anglais, etc.

Du déjà-vu à travers l’Amérique? Le natif du Québec demandait en anglais aux membres d’un groupe Facebook regroupant une multitude de Franco-Américains ce qu’ils souhaiteraient dire aux Québécois. Voici ma réponse.

Je mets parfois l'accent sur la survie considérable de la langue et de la culture du Québec dans la région de la Nouvelle-Angleterre. J'insiste aussi sur la perte de la langue et les effets de la perte de la culture et de l'assimilation sur les gens. Les deux réalités coexistent, et celle de « l’assimilation » est beaucoup plus complexe qu'on imagine. En 1970, il y avait 764 443 personnes en Nouvelle Angleterre, qui parlaient le français comme langue maternelle (Source : le recensement de 1970). Cela un siècle après les débuts d’une immigration massive et permanente des Canadiens-Français originaires du Québec.

Malgré de nombreuses tentatives pour assimiler les franco-américains, la survie dans cette région a été impressionnante. Même ceux qui ne parlent pas français ont conservé en grande partie la culture traditionnelle dans leurs pratiques religieuses, la cuisine, le folklore, les fêtes, la musique, les attitudes et croyances, l’histoire des familles, etc. Quatre cents ans de culture francophone ne disparaissent pas aisément.

Statue à Nashua, New Hampshire, honorant les travailleurs 
canadiens-français dans les usines 
au cours des XIXe et XXe siècles.

L'assimilation n’opère toutefois pas comme les gens pensent généralement. Ce qui se passe vraiment quand une minorité entre en contact avec une culture comme celle des Etats-Unis est une négociation complexe se déroulant entre la culture dominante et celle de la minorité (l’historien franco-américaine Mark Paul Richard a écrit à ce sujet dans son livre « Loyal But French »).

Différentes familles négocient leurs conditions de différentes manières. En cas de perte d'un marqueur culturel majeur comme la langue, la culture tend alors à entrer dans la clandestinité. Elle devienne « subterranenean » (en référence à l’ouvrage de Kerouac) et les négociations entre la culture de la minorité et la culture dominante s’individualisent.

Il s'agit de l'étape d'assimilation de ma famille lorsque mes parents ont déménagé tout d'abord des enclaves franco-américaines dans le Maine à la grande ville de Boston et puis quand ma famille a déménagé vers les banlieues. Les gestes et les paroles de ma famille étaient visiblement issus des cultures du Québec et de l'Acadie (ma grand-mère maternelle était Acadienne, mes autres grands-parents avaient des racines au Québec). Mais la culture était hors contexte et ce que faisait ma famille n’était pas nécessairement reconnu, même par nous-mêmes, dans le cadre d'une culture plus large parce qu'on parlait anglais chez nous.

Revenons à la question originale « ce que nous souhaiterions dire aux québécois? ». Je voudrais leur dire que le danger de l'assimilation et la perte de la langue sont réels et que cela peut commencer à se produire très rapidement. En conséquence, j'applaudis les efforts des québécois pour préserver leur langue et leur patrimoine par force de loi, au besoin. Je voudrais leur dire aussi que l'assimilation n'est pas un fichier binaire simple telle qu'une personne est un « nous » ou un « eux ». Nous n'étions pas transformés en « aliens » du jour au lendemain.

Un grand nombre d'entre nous sont encore Québécois dans nos cœurs et nos esprits sinon dans nos langues. Même après plusieurs générations, je me sens encore comme si je faisais partie du « grand-Nous » de Franco-Nord-Américains. L’assimilation est un phénomène complexe agissant à plusieurs niveaux, à l'instar de notre culture.

Je remercie Réjean Beaulieu de son aide rédactionnelle.

Canadien, Canadien-Français, Québécois

Early in the history of Nouvelle-France a distinction was made between les Français and les Canadiens. Les Français were those born in France and intending to return there. It included officialdom, and many of the clergy and military personnel. The term les Canadiens signified the French-speaking colonists born in Canada or permanently settled there. The term was used as early as the 1680s.*

After the Conquest, ratified by 1763, the new English colony was called the Province of Quebec but its people remained Canadiens despite the fact that the colony’s name and frontiers changed several times.

The place where most Canadiens dwelled was called successively Canada, the Province of Quebec, Lower Canada, Canada-East, and again the Province of Québec (and perhaps a couple of names I’ve forgotten) but the inhabitants continued to call themselves Canadiens.

With the American Revolution many of the Anglo-American colonists who wished to remain loyal to the Crown found homes in the British Province of Quebec. The division of this Province into two units, called Upper and Lower Canada, and the reorganization of its constitution in 1791, were to accommodate this new English-speaking population.

Upper Canada (the root of today’s Ontario) was the home of many of the American Loyalists, while Lower Canada constituted the older, solidly French settlements. We should not forget, however, that there were already Francophones in Upper Canada and Anglophones in the Lower province in these days.

Les Canadiens continued to call their Anglophone neighbors les Anglais. The children of Anglophones born in Upper Canada, however, began to claim the right to be called Canadians. The children of immigrants to the British North American provinces from many lands also claimed this right in later times. Yet, many Francophones spoke as though only they were Canadiens.

After the union of Upper and Lower Canada in the 1840s, a new variation was required. The uniqueness of the national identity of the Francophones was signified via the hyphenated label Canadien-français. This label persisted into the mid-20th c.

This label’s English equivalent, French-Canadian, is still the recognized term in the USA. If I say to most Americans that I am Franco-American or use the word Québécois they might not know what I’m talking about. I find that the easiest route to comprehension is to say that I am of French-Canadian descent. Americans seem to have some hook, however small, on which to hang that term.

The label Canadien-français crossed geographies. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries a Canadien-français was a Canadien-français whether one lived in Maine, Michigan, Ontario or Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha! This term was a national label unconnected to any particular geography. It represented a nation without a state.

Then came the great social and political revolution in Québec known as la révolution tranquille: the Quiet Revolution. This period in the 1960s, followed by the ascendancy of the Parti Québécois in the 1970s, changed the culture of Québec more swiftly than at any time in its history. The sixties were a time of social change throughout the Western world but perhaps nowhere else were the changes as profound as in Québec.

With this change came a new national label: Québécois. This label affirmed the new, secularized, forward-looking stance adopted by the Quiet Revolution. It rejected the former, hyphenated identity, a hybrid something-or-other, some part Canadian and some part French. The rapidity with which the Francophones of Québec embraced this label is astonishing. It was a brilliant piece of what we would now call rebranding.

So thorough and successful was this rebranding that the term is used even retroactively. For instance, in Québec one might speak of “the Québécois who were involved in the Rebellion of 1837.” But the Patriotes of 1837 would not have recognized the term. They were Canadiens. For them, I suspect, the term Québécois would have designated a resident of the city of Québec. **

This bold and decisive rebranding of the Francophone people of Québec is not without its ironies. After all, it was the English who called the community centered on the Saint-Laurent, the Province of Quebec. The French called it Canada. If we were to revive someone’s Franco-American great-grandmother she might wonder why we are surrendering our national label to les anglais. “We’re the Canayens!” she might say. “Why are we allowing les anglais to convince us that we are no longer such?”

One of the innovations of the term Québécois is that, unlike the terms Canadien or Canadien-français, the new designation is tied to a specific geography, that of Québec. Whereas my grandfather would have been recognized as a "Canadien des Etats-Unis,” is any Franco-American a “Québécois(e) des Etats-Unis”? Is such a category possible?

 

Canadiens des Etats-Unis:
WWI-era ad in
a Franco-American newspaper
Source: Claude Bélanger, Marianopolis College

It appears that the intention of the nationalists who transformed the Canadien-français of Québec into Québécois, was to reinforce the viability of the latter as a nation with its own territory as a prelude to establishing an independent republic. As such, the rebranding was formidable although it had consequences keenly felt among the Francophones who lived elsewhere in today’s Canada.

Canada became a land that the Québecois began to speak of as a foreign country. The art in the label Québécois is precisely in this distancing from anything Canadian. In declaring themselves to be not a type of Canadian (i.e. "the French type"), an identity at least as unique as that of any other nation-state is affirmed. 

With the Quiet Revolution, the newly minted Québécois, having survived a series of setbacks, circled the wagons. The gaze of Québec nationalism became focused on fortress Québec. Increasingly, there became a sense of Québec as a lone Francophone holdout in an unvariegated Anglophone landscape.

Once, however, the Francophones of Québec had continental ambitions. The Louis Riel affair, the question of French language schools in Manitoba, Ontario and New Brunswick, as well as various Franco-American events, were burning issues in Québec, debated in the press and followed with care.

I note with reluctance that nowadays, even among well-educated Québécois, I find little cognizance of the Francophone or Franco-gene groups in North America beyond the borders of la belle province. In fact we live all over the continent. I suggest gently that le fait français might be reinforced if we looked beyond our separate fortresses to renew our ancestors’ broader, continental perspective.

I hold that Québec’s best allies are Franco-Americans. As a general rule, we have maintained our affection for Québec and support its people in whatever path they choose.

Monsieur René Lévesque understood the potential importance of Franco-Americans to Québec’s future. Last year I learned from participants in these events that Monsieur Lévesque visited the Franco-American Center at the University of Maine during the campaign for the first referendum on Québec sovereignty in 1980.

Still waging a Cold War, there were fears in Washington that an independent Québec could become “another Cuba.” Monsieur Lévesque turned to Franco-Americans to help explain Québec to the USA. He understood that Franco-Americans were a link between his people and the mainstream USA which could be a great benefit to Québec.

Feebly, writing in English no less from a humble blog, I offer a hand to the rebranded Québécois behind the fortress walls. If you come to know us better you might find that we are not foreigners but long lost family.

* cf. Gilles Havard and Cécile Vidal, Histoire de L'Amérique Française (Paris: Flammarion, 2003) 403f

** To avoid this anachronism, on this blog I have used the older term Canadien, with the French spelling and usually italicized, to designate the 19th c. descendants of the former French colony of Canada although I have not always used the term consistently.

There is No Name for Us

The descendants of the many distinct Latin American and Hispano-Caribbean groups in the USA have adopted a common name: Latino or Hispanic. Although the South Florida Cuban-Americans, the Mexican-Americans of California, and those of Puerto Rican origin in New York City (to name just a few of the peoples called Latino) come from quite different countries, and each maintains its cultural distinctiveness, Latinos have recognized that their interests were best served by recognizing their commonality in terms of language or heritage. By gathering all of these distinct groups under a single name, they have increased their cultural presence enormously.

There is no single name that embraces all of the French North Americans. We have many names: Québécois(e), Acadien(ne), Cajun, Franco-American, etc. Although each of these groups represents a distinct culture, with its own narratives and traditions, we share a common root, and yet that commonality is very little expressed or appreciated. Instead we tend to emphasize differences. In some instances some of these groups even regard one another with a measure of contempt, with one group, for example, looking down their noses at the brand of French spoken by another. This is unfortunate since we are such a fragile plant. It’s as if we’re on the last lifeboat off of the Titanic and we’re bickering over who has the nicer shoes!

Among the Franco-Americans of New England, descendents of a late 19^th-early 20^th c. migration from French-speaking Canada, there was a partial merger of two of these distinct groups. Some of the mill towns in New England attracted emigration from among both the Québécois and the Acadians (French speakers from the Maritime Provinces of Eastern Canada). In some places the two communities went to the same churches and schools, lived in the same neighborhoods, and worked in the same mills and factories.

As French-speaking Catholics in a foreign land, they recognized that they had much more in common with each other than they had with the dominant culture. Their Yankee neighbors would not have understood the differences between the two groups and labeled them both, correctly or not, as “French-Canadian.” In some cases they intermarried with one another, creating a hybrid of the two cultures. 

My Grandparents' Wedding 1923:
Son of Québécois Marries Acadienne

Three of my grandparents had roots in various regions of Québec, while my maternal grandmother was an acadienne from Prince Edward Island. I’ve informed myself about the history of both groups and claim a heritage that is both Québécois and Acadien and elements of both cultures were present in the foods and folkways of my family.

It should be emphasized that these mixes happened in a minority of cases nonetheless, the hybrid called “Franco-American” has features of both cultures. In fact, one of my great-grandfathers was a Franco-Ontarien, adding yet another flavor to the mix. Franco-Americans in New England also came from all parts of Québec, representing a mix of regions that our Québécois cousins might regard as distinct.

I suggest that French North Americans at least consider following the example of our Latino friends and christen ourselves with a name that applies to all of us. This is not to lose the pride in being Cajun, Franco-American, or Québécois. Cuban- or Mexican-Americans have certainly not lost any of their flavor in regarding each other as fellow Latinos. It seems clear to me that our future lies more in emphasizing our commonality and our unity rather than our divisions.

I doubt my suggestion will be embraced.