Category: French Canada

Forgotten Tales of the Cold French North

Jean Baptiste In the nineteenth century, Jean Baptiste became an unofficial moniker for French Canadians—a symbolic term applied to them by English speakers to mirror their own John Bull and Brother Jonathan. A glimpse of parish records in the St. John Valley suggests that there was something to it. But in the same records we […]

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Lewiston: Winter Wonderland

It is thought doubtful if any city in the United States has ever entertained as picturesque a gathering of wintersportsmen from across the Canadian border as it was Lewiston’s privilege to entertain during the past week-end. In any event Lewiston has eclipsed its neighboring New England cities in this respect, and for 36 hours, at […]

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The “We” of Collective Identity

In September, Télé-Québec aired Notre rêve américain, a documentary on French-Canadian heritage in the United States hosted by Jean-Michel Dufaux and Sébastien Fréchette, a.k.a. Biz. Documentaries on the Franco-American experience are uncommon on both sides of the border; in Quebec, the (fictional) miniseries Les Tisserands du pouvoir, which aired more than thirty years ago, still […]

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Franco-American Archives: Dartmouth College

The two-hundredth post of Query the Past finds us where we started more than six years ago—with Mason Wade. A twentieth-century historian, Wade earned attention and praise for his biographies of Margaret Fuller and Francis Parkman and later his magnum opus, The French Canadians 1760-1945 (1955). A follow-up post that elicited its own controversy addressed […]

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The Transnational Quebecs

Last year, on Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day, the Montreal-based La Presse offered us a fascinating article about the Québecs—yes, plural. Reporter Jean-Christophe Laurence was not using the term metaphorically to describe the different regions or cultures that make up the province of Quebec. He was writing about the Québec family, for, yes, “Québec” happens to be a […]

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Histoire du Québec : Rectifier le tir

À lire ce qui s’écrit sur les réseaux sociaux, bon nombre de Québécoises et de Québécois vivent un combat quotidien—une petite guerre amorcée à la fin du régime français et loin d’être achevée, une petite guerre qui anime tous les aspects de la vie publique du Québec. Entendons-nous : le fait français est minoritaire dans son […]

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Families of the Diaspora

Again has commenced and closed the annual migration of the French Canadians.—Daily have we seen them pass in companies, loaded with knapsacks and covered with the dust of travel; all dressed alike, with Canada gray trousers, homespun shirt, straw hat and moccasins. Every year just before haying, thousands of the French inhabitants of Canada come […]

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Thomas Cottrell : Légende canadienne

Les longues soirées d’hiver nous donnent l’occasion de faire revivre les contes et légendes d’antan. Je vous propose ici une légende de la Côte-du-Sud qui rappelle un chapitre difficile de l’histoire du Québec. Les lecteurs et lectrices anglophones apprécieront peut-être, dans le même registre, A French-Canadian Christmas Carol et The Clever Woman. Je vous invite […]

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