We continue to see online posts and comments about the Patriot invasion and occupation of Quebec in 1775-1776. The subject has become something of a niche parlor game for Quebec history buffs. Some people are quick to opine on the merits of British rule and whether French Canadians in the St. Lawrence River valley might […]
Continue readingCategory: Lake Champlain
Franco-American Politics in Northern New England
Some four years ago I completed a draft of my “COVID book,” which would be published as “Tout nous serait possible”: Une histoire politique des Franco-Américains, 1874-1945, the first full-length regional synthesis of Franco-Americans’ political involvement. The book is available in French only, though many aspects have appeared in similar form on this blog since […]
Continue readingFrench New York
My earliest memories and only childhood memories of New York State are of peaks and valleys: a family trip to Whiteface Mountain and Ausable Chasm. Eventually I would see New York City, Jamestown, Little Falls, Troy, Whitehall, Ticonderoga… the list goes on (though Watkins Glen remains obstinately on the bucket list). Only recently did I […]
Continue readingFamilies 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 […]
Continue readingThose Who Returned: One Family’s Journey to the U.S. and Back
An earlier version of this essay appeared in the winter 2022-2023 issue of Le Forum, the quarterly publication of the Franco-American Centre (University of Maine). Please cite appropriately. On both sides of my family, I am a direct descendant of individuals who elected to live and work in the United States. See, on the migrations of […]
Continue readingMigratory Beachheads and Marauding Canadians
We might call it a consensus. Whereas most works of Franco-American history focus on the period between the U.S. Civil War and the Great Depression, scholars would generally agree that the great hemorrhage, la grande saignée, began around 1840. Amid the economic and political turbulence that followed the Canadian Rebellions of 1837-1838, French Canadians settled […]
Continue readingThe Birthplace of Franco-America
The subscribers . . . beg leave to lay before Your Excellency their sad situation, seeing themselves abandoned in general by those who have conducted them in the just cause they have been engaged in since 1775 . . . in consequence of orders, and promises as well from Your Excellency as from the honorable […]
Continue readingRoads, Rails, and Canals: Quebec and the Transportation Revolution
For generations, the field of migration history has evolved around a basic framework of push and pull factors. We can explain people’s decision to relocate by looking at their existing circumstances and the suspected advantages (real or perceived) offered by their destination. But the how—the process of relocating—is too often lost in this framework, which […]
Continue readingVoting While Franco-American: The View from Plattsburgh
Franco-American political candidates do not earn the same easy acclaim from their own heritage community they once did. This is especially clear in Maine, where Paul LePage seeks to return to the governor’s office. By virtue of his policies and his remarks on his ethnic background, LePage has alienated many compatriots. His opponent, by contrast, […]
Continue readingA Canadian Excursion to New York City in 1851
Surely we will all agree that transportation history is inherently interesting. If, somehow, we can’t, we should recognize that we can’t understand the history of commerce and migration without it. We have previously seen (here and here) the challenges Bishop Plessis faced while traveling around the Maritime colonies and down to New York in the […]
Continue reading