One particular claim to fame dominates the history of St. Albans, Vermont: the Confederate raid on local banks that was staged from Canadian soil in 1864. Other events that truly made the city remain little known to outsiders, as is the history of the region as a whole. The Confederate raid at least has the […]
Continue readingCategory: Quebec History
Survivance and Its Discontents
One cannot tell the story of the northeastern Franco-Americans without discussing survivance. This was an ideology of cultural survival in which the French language and the Roman Catholic faith were mutually supportive, with the loss of the first entailing earthly perdition and eternal damnation. These were the two pillars of French Canadians’ identity, the primary […]
Continue readingTraveling with a Bishop in 1815, Part I
Four men joined the expedition—men of the cloth, all with a strong constitution, able to carry a heavy load of personal belongings, supplies, and religious items that would eventually fill up Quebeckers’ deep well of curse words. De Boucherville, Gaulin, Gauvreau, and Bolduc had as their esteemed companion and leader the bishop of Quebec, Joseph-Octave […]
Continue readingFarewell, Jerry
An earlier version of this essay appeared en français in the spring 2018 issue of Le Forum, the quarterly publication of the Franco-American Centre (University of Maine). * * * We stopped at Mountain View on a gloomy and intensely cold December day. Thanks to a volunteer who tends to the cemetery, we had at […]
Continue readingFranco-American Clippings
I never tire of jumping into newspaper archives in search of one item, only to find something far more eye-opening, or intriguing, or informative. I am always happy to share those findings, but seldom do my press clippings fit in perfectly with one of my regular blog posts. Since the beginning of the year I […]
Continue readingJean Rivard: American and Catholic
See Part I here. Themes In my edition of Jean Rivard, the editor establishes the influence of Don Quixote and Robinson Crusoe on Gérin-Lajoie’s novel. But the parallels that struck me first and foremost—parallels that will be familiar to American readers—involve Walden and Horatio Alger novels. Both Henry David Thoreau and Rivard go into the […]
Continue readingJean Rivard: A Pioneering Novel
How easily we overlook what was happening in Lower Canada in the early 1860s. While bloody conflict wrecked Mexico, the American giant was embroiled in a devastating civil war that would claim 700,000 lives and lead to “a new birth of freedom.” For a time, it seemed that the winds of war would sweep over […]
Continue readingFranco-American History in Ten Documents, Part II
See the first installment on important Franco-American documents here. A Man and His Dream (1909) Félix Albert had a tale to tell—with some false modesty, his own. In the early twentieth century, after a turbulent life, he had someone, perhaps a local priest, write down his experience as an immigrant and a man of many […]
Continue readingFranco-American Books: A Wish List
Mark your calendars! On May 21, at noon (Eastern time), I will deliver a lecture as part of the Vermont Historical Society’s Third Thursday program. At the moment, the plan is to offer access on Zoom. The talk is titled “The Other Franco-Americans: Tracing French-Canadian Settlement in Vermont.” You can find more info on the […]
Continue readingThe Franco-American Origin Story in Parish Records
They went to Corbeau and Whitehall. They went to Vergennes and Highgate. They returned, and again to the Great Republic they went. This was a proto-industrial era, a time before ubiquitous factories, before national parishes, before the idea of Franco-America could form as something succinct and coherent. These were the early days of French Canadians’ […]
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