This is the second piece of a two part article. If you have not done it yet, I strongly recommend you read the first part before, available below.
19th century: The seeds of the great exodus
Besides the demographic effect of burgeoning French-Canadian families as explained in part 1, where households of 10, 12 or 15 kids were common for so long, the composition of today’s geographic Québec changed quite a bit in the century that spans between the 1770’s and 1860’s.
For example, following the successful American revolution, many Loyalists to the British Crown amongst American colonists emigrated in Ontario, the Maritimes but also Québec, in the years that followed US independence. In addition, immigration from across the atlantic shifted for obvious reasons from mostly French to a mix of British, Scottish and Irish settlers.
This shift experienced in the North American political balance of power was thus highly influential in the long run for the evolution of demography in the region. My goal here is not to explore thoroughly all the events that occurred during that particular century but to capture only the underlying conditions that led to consequential population movements by the end of the 19th century.
In the decades following the American Civil War, the conditions were ripe for population movements. Since the British now controlled most of the economic levers in Canada, limits to opportunities outside the family farm or small jobs as daily laborers within their territory, encouraged (some might even say forced) many young French-Canadians to leave their families and the cultural comfort of their villages to take their chances across the border in the multiple mill towns of New England.
Even if the conditions were difficult - long hours, bad wages and sometimes horrible housing - the migration continued for decades to eventually amputate the population of Québec by close to a million citizens, most of whom would never return to their home country.
In his singular book on Franco-Americans, author David Vermette (a French-Canadian descendent himself) aptly observed in his research another facet of Québec’s culture that contributed to this mass exodus. A factor few contemporary observers are willing to acknowledge today, probably because the scars left on Québec society were so deep, thus providing the perfect reason for a voluntary amnesia of this episode of French-Canadian history.
“There were also ideological impediments to Québec’s industrialization. The clerical elite identified industrialism with what they regarded as Anglo-Saxon materialism. Industrialization was for Protestants. Canadien Catholics were quintessentially rural, they believed. Rurality was a feature of national identity.”
David Vermette, Franco-American author and researcher
Thus, if rurality was an intrinsic part of French-Canadian identity for the longest time and if rurality in itself is not a driving force for long term sustainable population growth, urbanization is, it is not surprising Québec was eventually outpaced by New England for example and could not retain the majority of its population in that era.
Vermette later argued in his book that contrary to popular belief in the Anglo-saxon world, French-Canadians were not stuck in their old customs from centuries prior. They had the economic mobility and motivation to make tough decisions against the pressure of Catholic clergy elite. True.
But observing as a whole that French-Canadians at the time were less industrialists and progressive than their neighbors still has some validity.
These statements are not mutually exclusive and can both have some merit simultaneously. It seems reasonable to recognize in hindsight that the most dynamic individuals in an otherwise suffocating society would have taken the chance to start a new life across the border.
More than century later, the diaspora in the US known as the Franco-Americans have very little to no relationship with the country they left. There is unfortunately a form of repudiation that is still prevalent in modern Québec society. The closely knitted kinship of French-Canadians brought positive outcomes of survival throughout its history but this characteristic often brings a tendency to outcast members that voluntarily choose to leave the motherland regardless of the motivations.
In any case, the history of Québec was undoubtedly altered by such an exodus on a massive scale that lasted for decades, well into the 20th century. To put it in perspective, a million people represented about half the population of the territory in this era.
One could only imagine how different Québec would be today if the province had managed to offer the socio-economic opportunities to retain all its citizens.
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