New Bedford gets a raw deal. Its Franco-Americans even more so. The city is known for its whaling history and images straight out of Moby Dick—rough, hardy Yankee whalers who in time passed the torch to Portuguese fishermen. Seafarers are more compelling, more romantic figures, we might suppose, than mill workers, whatever their ethnic background. […]
Continue readingReview: Schubart, The Lamoille Stories
Book Review Bill Schubart. The Lamoille Stories: Uncle Benoit’s Wake and Other Tales from Vermont. Hinesburg: Magic Hill Press, 2013 [2008]. Yet, the rural Franco-Vermonters have a sense of their identity as French people, both those who live on family-owned farms, and those who live in mini-mill towns like Beecher Falls. The French-Vermonter’s identity is […]
Continue readingThe Clever Woman: A French-Canadian Folk Tale
In the literary ferment of the late nineteenth century, Quebec authors sought to craft a new national identity that could be read back in time. Quite consciously, such authors as Louis Fréchette and Honoré Beaugrand jotted down and published old oral traditions that were at risk of being forever lost. (It seems they may also […]
Continue readingSilent But Visible? French Canadians on Stage and Screen
An earlier version of this essay appeared in the fall 2021 issue of Le Forum, the quarterly publication of the Franco-American Centre (University of Maine). Please cite appropriately. * * * In early nineteenth-century Michigan, a Chippewa couple adopted four-year-old Leah Campeau, whom they had found wandering alone in the wilderness. After the War of […]
Continue readingQTP at 150: Back to Ding-a-Long Street
The several million Americans of French or French-Canadian origin, who are among the oldest Americans of European stock, are for the most part human vestiges of the vast continental French empire in North America. With these words, quoted from historian Mason Wade’s work, Query the Past launched into the story of the transnational French-Canadian community. […]
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 readingThe Many Trials of Lower Canada
In the last blog post, we considered how Lower Canadian agriculture may or may not have traversed a period of crisis in the first half of the nineteenth century. Historians still debate whether the colony experienced a sustained production crisis. The challenges were unquestionably many, however: soil exhaustion; fluke climatic events; fluctuating demand in Britain […]
Continue readingFinding Franco-Americans in Agricultural Reports
As we’ve previously seen on this blog, nineteenth-century government reports contain abundant information about French-Canadian emigration. Legislative committees studied the issue in 1849 and again eight years later. Emigration was also a matter of debate in the halls of Quebec’s provincial legislature after 1867. Studies and commentaries commissioned (or received) by the contemporary Canadian press […]
Continue readingNuancing Native-French Relations
The arrival of European peoples in the Americas had a cataclysmic effect on the original occupants of the land. Initially, the devastation of Indigenous nations owed primarily to the spread of unknown diseases. As Europeans became more numerous and asserted their influence, Natives suffered from war, the loss of their ancestral territory, heightened competition for […]
Continue readingVisions of Kerouac
This is no ordinary mois de la francophonie. This month marks the centennial of Jack Kerouac’s birth. The anniversary provides the opportunity to assess the legacy of the celebrated author and Franco-American icon—a legacy that should be explored in its full complexity, from Kerouac’s personal weaknesses to his pioneering work. We should hope that renewed […]
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