From: The Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples/Belgians/Cornelius J. Jaenen
In addition to holding important positions in universities, academies, learned societies, libraries, archives, and museums, Belgians have made significant contributions in music, the theatre, and the fine arts. Behind the founding of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Montreal in 1873 was the colonizing priest P.J. Verbist. Guillaume-Joseph Mechtler, said to have been the first Canadian to be paid for his compositions, was organist of Notre-Dame church in Montreal from 1792 to 1832. Famous organists in the twentieth century included Benoît Verdickt at Lachine, Auguste Leyssens at Sorel, and Joseph Vermandere at St Joseph’s Oratory in Montreal from 1919 to 1937. The renowned violists Jules Hone and Frantz Jehin-Prume settled in Montreal in the 1860s. Jehin-Prume in 1891 founded the Association Artistique de Montréal, Quebec’s first professional chamber music society, among whose members were gifted compatriots Erasme Jehin-Prume and Jean-Baptiste Dubois. The latter gave classes for the general public paid for by the provincial government. Sohmer Park, inaugurated in 1889, featured Belgian musicians in its concerts, and many of them remained in Quebec to teach music. Joseph-Jean Goulet, for example, played an important role in the founding of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, which began with a core of Belgian musicians in 1894. His brother Jean conducted choral productions in Montreal until 1955 for the Société Canadienne d’Oérette and the Variétés Lyriques. In 1933 Henri Vermandere started and for many years directed the choir school called the Petits Chanteurs à la Croix de Bois. At about the same time, pianist Severin Moisse and violinist Maurice Onderet began their distinguished careers as soloists and teachers in Montreal.
The internationally known paintings of Henri Leopold Masson, a native of Namur, reflect his love of the Gatineau region near Ottawa. Among the other artists of Belgian origin who have attained regional fame are Francis Coutellier, Guy Gosselin, Michel Meerts, Jan Mirck, Claire Miron, and Raymonde and Léon Plonteux. In sculpture, Marcel Braitstein, Yosef Gertrudis Drenters, Auguste Hammerechts, and Pierre Hayvaert have been outstanding. Hayvaert is remembered especially for his work for the Quebec pavilion at Expo 67.
In 1902 Alphonse Ghyssens laid the groundwork for an organization to bring his compatriots in Montreal together. The result was the incorporation the following year of the Union Belge, with a number of community personalities, including the Count de Bellefroid and Baron Kerwyn de Lettenhoven, on its executive committee. It organized such public festivities as the annual Belgian Independence Day parade through the streets of Montreal each July and the distribution of gifts to children on St Nicholas Day (6 December) and provided a meeting place for reunions, dances, card parties, and Breugelian meals. During the 1930s the society suffered from declining membership, since immigration had virtually ceased, and from financial problems, but it was reorganized and given new vitality in 1939 as the Union Nationale Belge.
The Union Belge had from its inception brought together both Walloons and Flemings. However, in 1915 each linguistic group founded its own association, the Flemings the Société Moedertaal and the Walloons the Club Wallon de Montréal. They were both short-lived, having disappeared by 1920. The idea of separate associations resurfaced in 1964 in the Vlaamse Kring van Montreal, housed on the premises of the Union Nationale Belge, and the Association Belge de Langue Française de Montréal, creation of the ethnocentric Walloon “nationalist” François Charmanne. He promoted both Walloon folklore and Québécois nationalism through his newspaper Le Coq wallon (Montreal) and appears to have alienated some of his compatriots in so doing.
In Manitoba the Belgians organized few associations to preserve their language and cultural heritage. From the turn of the century, Walloons in Saint-Boniface participated in both the drama group Cercle Molière and the Société Lyrique Gounod. The Flemish community organized the La Vérendrye band in 1912 and three years later the Onder Ons dramatic club. Rural communities such as Bruxelles and Sainte-Rose du Lac had their own Belgian brass bands, but after World War II these became multicultural community groups.
The major institution in western Canada was the Club Belge in Saint-Boniface, founded in 1905 largely through the efforts of Louis de Nobele, who had been active in assisting immigrants from his homeland. It began as a social and cultural organization with a special mission to assist newcomers. Here immigrants could obtain information about jobs and persons to contact as they made their way westward. Although it was strictly non-partisan, people came to discuss political and social issues, community concerns, and business affairs. The benevolent and charitable activities of the club multiplied rapidly: a ladies’ auxiliary in 1926 “to further the moral and material aspirations of the Club,” a Belgian Mutual Benefit Society in 1928 to administer a distress fund, and a Belgian Credit Union Society in 1939 in cooperation with the Flemish Sacred Heart parish. By 1940 it had ceased to be a clearing-house for immigrants and had begun attracting members from the business community. It also became the umbrella organization for various sports and recreational activities associated with Belgians on the prairies. To this end it operated a branch in Sainte-Rose du Lac for twenty years. The club sponsored and publicized the activities of archery groups, Belgian bowling tournaments, bicycle racing, and pigeon racing. Provincial semi-finalists still compete at the “national” finals in Detroit or southwestern Ontario. At its inception the club operated in both French and Flemish, but now official minutes and correspondence are in English. At present it functions largely as a benevolent society and is frequented by members of other ethnic groups.
In Ontario the Flemish nationalist movement made itself felt through a number of cultural organizations. Theatrical companies from Detroit toured centres in the southwestern part of the province in the 1920s. In that decade as well, an association known as Den Vriendenkring opened a school in Leamington to teach Flemish, and the Vlaanderen’s Kerels in Big Point near Chatham started public instruction in Flemish language and culture. In Wallaceburg the De Goldendag group promoted various cultural activities, while in Windsor a Flemish choir flourished.
After the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the visit of a special mission to American and Canadian cities aroused popular indignation against Germany’s violation of Belgian neutrality and alleged German atrocities and forged strong links between Belgium and Canada. During the next four years, Belgium’s valiant resistance in the war saw the organization throughout Canada of the Belgian Relief Fund and support of the Red Cross in its efforts to provide food for children in the occupied zone. Following the war the Belgian War Veterans Association and the National Federation of Former Prisoners of War were established. The Royal Canadian Legion welcomed the Filiale Albert I. A campaign to raise funds for the restoration of the university in Louvain met with strong support, especially in Quebec.
The war also stimulated Flemish nationalism, which was reflected in the organization in Michigan in 1919 of Flandria-America. This association was dedicated to reawakening ethnocultural awareness and pride, and its activities quickly spread into Ontario. Adolf Spillemaeckers regularly visited communities in that province to promote Flemish plays, concerts, public readings, and lectures under the banner of Flandria-America in the inter-war period.
In the 1930s Louis Empain brought together a number of prominent politicians and diplomats with the object of forming an association to promote cultural and social ties between Belgium and Canada. The result was the elitist Association Belgique-Canada, which sponsored lectures, concerts, exhibitions, formal receptions, and an annual ball. During World War II the association organized many forms of aid to Belgian victims of the war and occupation.
Most of the organizations mentioned above have long since collapsed. At present, there are four major Belgian clubs in Canada. Two were organized near the turn of the century in Montreal and Saint-Boniface; the other two were established after World War II in Delhi and Sabrevois. In 1948 the tobacco-belt Belgians felt the need for a clubhouse in Delhi for their social, recreational, and cultural activities. The club became the focal point for the traditional bicycle races, pigeon races, and Belgian bowling and pole-archery tournaments. In 1962 the Belgian dairymen of the Richelieu valley built the Club Belgo-canadien in Sabrevois. Unlike the other Belgian clubs, its activities are more social than cultural or benevolent, and it has become a meeting place for more than Belgians.
A unique association, Belgians in the World, made its appearance in Ontario in 1962. Its true ethnic and nationalist mission was revealed soon afterwards when it was renamed Vlamingen in de Wereld (Flemings in the World), and in 1965 a congress of representatives from all over the globe was organized in Brussels. Canadian Flemings were represented by delegates from the Belgian clubs in Saint-Boniface and Delhi and from Tillsonburg. Among the exchanges that resulted was the sending of university students from Flanders to Canada to harvest tobacco during the day and spend the evenings promoting Flemish language and culture. This combination of fieldworkers and cultural agents continued until the mid-1980s. Since then, small groups of students have come to Canada, but they are now composed of both Walloons and Flemings and have a less obvious sociopolitical agenda.
The first generation of Walloon immigrants were more literate than their Flemish counterparts, and as francophones they subscribed either to newspapers from Belgium or to French-Canadian publications. The Flemings have had their own newspapers from the United States, including the Gazette van Moline (Moline, Ill., 1907–40), incorporated in 1940 into the Gazette van Detroit (Detroit, 1914– ).
