Disunity and Discontent

See Part I here.

“I am full of grief,” Jacques Rouse declared, “that so few Frenchmen as we are here, we cannot live in concord together.”

How often have we heard this story of the factious (or fractious) French Canadians? How often have we experienced it?

• French Canadians in Quebec failed to embrace and support their exiled compatriots.
• Franco-Americans would have constituted a formidable political bloc had they only avoided splitting their votes, and they might have gained greater representation by voting for their own.
• Franco-Americans could have prevailed against their bishops had it not been for the temporizers in their midst.
• Francos were prone to regular “chicanes de clocher.”

Many of us have read and heard these claims more than once or twice. This is quite the paradox, considering that outsiders—American nativists, for instance—deemed French Canadians clannish and ready to obey their priests and editors in all things.

A zombie-like Catholic legion goose-stepping across Yankeedom.

The truth is that there was disunity, which Franco elites deplored—and frequently amplified.

It is not simply that the French-Canadian community fractured over time. Already, as institution-building was accelerating among expatriates at the end of the 1860s, fault lines were beginning to appear. As Ferdinand Gagnon, “the father of the Franco-American press,” explained:

We must acknowledge that the truth of the wise maxim that ‘there is strength in unity’ is still not fully understood among us—or, if it is, we do not put it in practice. That is the source of our sad misunderstandings, these disastrous divisions that undermine so many noble and legitimate hopes while paralyzing the most dedicated efforts.

When the matter is a praiseworthy endeavor, Canadians’ sympathies are typically not lacking; but that which is found wanting in them—and we must regret saying so—is a shared view, a common will that is so indispensable to the success of projects…

We cannot help but deplore this factious spirit that seems to arise among us more easily than among other peoples…

– L’Etendard national, February 17, 1870

Laments over disunity make sense if we abide by a prescriptive, monolithic definition of the Franco-American identity—a fairly narrow definition perpetuated by elites until quite recently. From one generation to the next, this strict definition seemed to reinforce how Franco-Americans failed to meet that imagined benchmark and failed to cohere. Ferdinand Gagnon might have stated that an ethnic group divided against itself cannot stand on its own.

A narrow, prescriptive and exclusive identity is a problem. So is the implication that other ethnic groups were not as divided. Anyone familiar with the history of the Irish, Italians, and Jews in America (to name but a few immigrant groups) knows that to be patently false. Fractious French? No more than any other group. That at times some Francos could not “live in concord together” does not owe to some essential cultural characteristic, but to the different experiences, interests, values, and hopes that would naturally cut across a community of millions.

Then, there is a third problem. While Gagnon was making a plea for unity, he was also busy misrepresenting and marginalizing the views of others in the nascent Franco-American community, including Médéric Lanctôt, Louis Fréchette, and soon Honoré Beaugrand as well. His ascent as the dominant voice among Franco-Americans was hard-fought and helped to flatten both intellectual debate and the Franco identity.

Perhaps, then, there should be less hand-wringing over the differences that make for a rich and vibrant culture. Perhaps the conversation and exchanges that can come from such “disunity” are a far better alternative to the prescriptive identities and narratives that have been advanced by well-placed intellectual leaders since times immemorial.

In all eras, there are individuals who live with figurative hunger—who crave recognition and worry about their stature. And we know that hunger, isolation, and fear do things to a person.

There are individuals who attempt to create a standard narrative—at the top of which they place themselves—by willfully misinterpreting and marginalizing other views.

In the view of late nineteenth-century Franco-American Republicans, Benjamin Lenthier would have fit that bill. Although his time in the spotlight was brief, Lenthier was the most influential editor to emerge after Gagnon’s premature death. He built a newspaper empire thanks to Democratic Party subsidies; for a year he continually insisted on identifying Franco interests with Democratic policies and values. Nearly all of his publications collapsed following the presidential election of 1892, burying with them an essential pillar of survivance in the U.S. Northeast. Lenthier got his prize the following year when President Cleveland made him consul in Sherbrooke, Quebec. For some it seemed as though it had all been about Lenthier himself in the first place. In this case, at least, there were mitigating circumstances: Lenthier had in fact been a dedicated supporter of survivance since coming to the U.S.; he was playing American politics on its own terms and had no real control over party funds.

A more notorious figure was Joseph de Champlain, who defrauded working-class investors while president of the New England Investment Company—which led to his arrest in Manchester, in 1911. Though he was charged with mail fraud, there is evidence that Champlain, unable to make a profit, began paying out “dividends” to investors that were actually earned from the sale of additional shares to an unsuspecting public. Champlain was found innocent of the charge of mail fraud; he also found his reputation tarnished. That, of course, means little considering the thousands of Franco-American factory workers who lost money as the scheme unraveled. The company itself was finally bought out by Manchester Coal and Ice, in 1914, and buried.

The idea, of course, is not to shame people who have long passed. Nor is it to relegate them to the most obscure parts of our historical memory. Their stories matter; symbols matter. My job—and our collective responsibility—is specifically to not forget. We should remember that power, including intellectual power, is easily misused or abused. We should continue to write and speak softly, yes, but also let the powerful know we carry a big sword.

Far from seeking refuge from our own differences in a mainstream narrative and well-placed figureheads—hawkers of horse pucky as well as well-meaning individuals—we should perhaps embrace the chorus of voices that promises to enrich the French-Canadian story in new and exciting ways. Diversity, after all, is a blessing if the mots d’ordre are trust, respect, and charity.

Next week: The Franco-American Origin Story.