In partnership with RetroNews, the press site of the National Library of France, The duty offers a series that goes back to the media sources of the France-Quebec relationship, from the War of the Conquest to the visit of General de Gaulle, including the tour of Sarah Bernhardt on the banks of the St. Lawrence. Eighth text.
We are in the spring of 1873. The French are discussing the recent disappearance of their fallen emperor, Napoleon III, who died in England as a result of his urinary stones. France still bears the marks of the bloody war that this monarch launched three years earlier against Prussia. German soldiers still occupy part of the country. Alsace and Lorraine, annexed to the Reich, will be at the heart of a revengeful nationalist policy.
In Paris, buildings riddled with bullets bear witness to the violence of the fighting that put an end to the Insurrectionary Commune of 1871. The town hall was reduced to ashes. Monuments have been thrown to the ground. The ideal of freedom of the Communards was buried under the rubble, in the wake of the reconquest of the city by the troops of the republican government of Adolphe Thiers. A lot of blood has flowed. In French Canada, in conservative Catholic circles, people are wary of immigration which could, it is believed, also carry exiles from this revolutionary France that the power in place has unceremoniously crushed.
The gloomy political landscape of France leads many of its citizens to turn to North America. In Canada, the heirs of New France seem to prosper within their Dominion of the British Empire, founded six years earlier. The number of French Canadians continues to grow, “despite their disproportionate emigration to all neighboring countries and especially to the United States, where they are now more than 600,000”, reports the Political and literary review April 26, 1873.
Driven to factories by the rural exodus, French Canadians gathered in the working-class neighborhoods of the industrial towns of New England. “This fertile race wins incessantly before it, on its own territory and on all its borders,” we read in the French weekly. It is said to be firmly established in the northern states of New York, Vermont and Maine. A French working-class workforce will join here and there in this migratory movement which adds to the high French-Canadian birth rate.
A certain number of French nationals who have known the tragic experience of the Commune continue to campaign for better social conditions in Canada. For several very Catholic Canadian newspapers, the specter of socialism could threaten peace under the effect of “foreign agitators” from immigrant backgrounds.
On the occasion of strikes and upheavals linked to poor working conditions denounced by workers’ movements, the authorities readily believe that the Commune could replay itself on the banks of the St. Lawrence River. So much so that it occasionally serves as a pretext to avoid considering the very real bad working conditions denounced by workers’ movements.
Children by the dozen
To illustrate the fertility of the “French race in Canada”, the Political and literary review give the example of Louis Bois, a wealthy farmer from Saint-Jean-Port-Joli, whose thirtieth child has just been baptized. “This good citizen, who is preparing so much work for the census takers, has been married twice: his first wife gave him twelve children, the second eighteen. Of these thirty children, twenty-six are alive. “
This fantasy of conquering the land through natural population growth is fueled by the recent wave of immigration from the Third Republic. “The current which has just resumed was interrupted for 116 years, that is to say since the beginning of the Seven Years’ War”, explains the Political and literary review.
The arrival of French immigrants in the St.Lawrence Valley is also considered essential to absorb the Canadian demographic bleeding towards the United States, reports the Paris messenger of October 30, 1873. The newspaper quotes on this subject the confidences of a “Canadian statesman occupying an eminent position and cultivates letters with success”.
“These are farmers, brave and honest workers that we need, not supporters of the Commune, the declassified or people who believe neither in God nor in the devil”, declares the anonymous politician … who reveals himself completely. many even boasting of having “presided over” Quebec. By excluding from the outset the incumbent Prime Minister, Gédéon Ouimet, it can only be his predecessor, the conservative and man of letters Pierre-Joseph-Olivier Chauveau, in office between 1867 and 1873. Chauveau would not be the alone to oppose the Communards. The journal of Octave Crémazie, who was staying in France at the time, shows a rejection of this appetite for freedom of the popular classes in circles of Catholic power.
the Paris messenger reports the existence of a systemic rejection of immigrants who do not adhere to majority Catholicism in the St. Lawrence Valley. “Certain French emigres, no doubt lost, but only lost, are forced to leave Canada because of religious intolerance. The fact is not spelled out, but it is sufficiently stated so that no one is mistaken. “
The reporter takes a stand in favor of open immigration, on the basis of a supposed sovereignty of Canada. “Canadians, being masters at home and possessing numbers and strength, may have the right to impose whatever opinions they please and even push them to the point of intolerance. But we have the power to judge them and to instruct our readers about them. “
For the journalist, the attitude of Canadians is roughly similar to that of other peoples towards immigration. ” We believe […] that Canadians will do well to imitate the Americans on this point. They have decided to welcome emigration wherever it comes from and to leave it free without worrying too much about opinions and beliefs. “
The canadian turtle
The French should be more concerned with the settlement of Canada, believes the Journal of political and literary debates February 20, 1875. “We are not unaware that in our country questions relating to emigration do not fascinate anyone and interest very few people,” writes the reporter, signing with his initials ‘EF’. It is even with the most perfect recklessness that we attend the spectacle, unflattering for our national self-esteem, of the absorption by the Germans and the Anglo-Saxons of three continents: America, Asia and Australia. It seems that the almost exclusive occupation by foreign races of these three continents in no way concerns the interests and the future of our country. “
The journalist also criticizes the lack of initiative of the Canadian federal government and its preference for settlers of British origin. “It was not until quite late that the Canadians thought of calling French emigration their own. Before 1872, there were hardly more than twenty emigrants [français] heading annually to this country which, open with two doors to Anglo-Saxon emigration, also seemed to have to be absorbed by this race. “
It should also be noted that Ottawa’s policy will continue to largely favor immigration from the nebula of the British Empire, which will considerably suppress the contribution of French-speaking countries until after the Second World War. Evidenced in the XIXe century the constant dumping of leaflets calling for immigration to the side of the British Isles. “We see from a report by the emigration committee in Ottawa that out of 600,000 brochures and 500,000 cards printed in English and distributed among the working classes, barely 20,000 were in our language. », We read in the Journal of political and literary debates.
In 1885, Gustave de Molinari made an initial assessment of French emigration to Canada in this same journal. Before getting to the heart of the matter, the reporter notes that Canada is constantly eclipsed by the United States in the European press. “The marvelous progress of the American Union has somewhat overshadowed that of this vast Confederation which occupies, under the now purely nominal authority of England, the north of the American continent. “
The Canadian turtle could, however, overtake the American hare in demographic terms, Molinari believes. “It will be, within a century, one of the most powerful empires in the world,” says the reporter, relying on statistical data from 1885. “Assuming that this progression does not weaken, the Dominion would have at the end of the next century 250 million inhabitants, almost the current population of Europe. This will be quite far from the mark: in 2021, Canada has only 38 million inhabitants.