From: The Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples/Bretons/Mario Mimeault
In time, constant return to the coasts of North America led to the establishment of permanent settlements. The fishing effort was such that in 1655 the king of France proposed the appointment of a governor in Plaisance, Newfoundland, to encourage the activities of his subjects. However, the burghers at home in Saint-Malo, fearing that their freedom of action would be constrained, protested this appointment. The Breton shipowners clearly were not interested in getting involved in a colonization project. But deriving the maximum profit from their operations necessitated fishing early in the spring and late in the fall, and this need led them to consider the advantages of permanent settlement. Fishers continued to go to Plaisance even after such a settlement was founded in 1660, using it as a supply depot and a haven during storms.
When Plaisance came under British rule with the signing of the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 the entire colony moved to Île Royale, as Cape Breton was called under French rule. This was a fishing area familiar to Bretons, and the port of Saint-Malo quickly became one of Louisbourg’s major trading partners. Bretons regarded the Gulf of St Lawrence almost as an extension of their native province. In the eighty-year period between 1713 and 1792 the port of Saint-Malo sent 4,654 fishing ships and more than 106,967 individuals to North America (the banks and coast of Newfoundland, Labrador, the Gaspé, and Île Royale). Nor is it surprising that Bretons formed one of the largest contingents of settlers in the neighbouring colony of New France.
It was Jacques Cartier who initially proposed the establishment of a colony in the St Lawrence valley to the king of France. The initial plan involved 276 people, including 146 settlers and tradespeople, and in 1541 a small colony was founded at Cap-Rouge near Quebec. It barely lasted the winter and came to an abrupt and tragic end, as misunderstandings with the aboriginal people led to the massacre of thirty-five of the French colonists. The colonists lacked the skills needed to allow such a venture to survive – partly as a result of the quality of the recruits, drawn largely from the prisons of Brittany and Normandy.
A Breton noble, Troilus de La Roche de Mesgouez, set out to found a colony in the New World in 1577, but his expedition was grounded when English pirates captured his flagship. He revived his enterprise in 1584 with a contingent of 300 people, but this time a storm drove his flagship to Saintonge on the west coast of France. La Roche de Mesgouez made a third attempt in 1598 and managed to settle some fifty people on Sable Island, south of Acadia. Once again the colony was made up of beggars and habitual criminals, and its composition and haphazard provisioning led to the ruin of La Roche’s efforts.
The level of organization of these initiatives varied, and the financing was often uncertain. Lacking the means to invest in the development of his colony, the king granted titles linked to fishing or fur-trading monopolies to defray the costs. The individuals involved could not easily gather the initial investment, and political circumstances were not favourable to them. As a result, this formula, a new one in the fishing industry, was not a great success.
In 1622 the Parlement of Brittany became interested in a massive scheme put forward by Breton merchants represented by François du Noyer, Sieur de Saint-Martin. In exchange for a monopoly on Canadian products, Brittany would officially take charge of the colonization of New France through a company. However, the hesitancy of the merchants, along with pressure put on representatives who wanted to preserve free enterprise, led to the failure of the scheme.
From then on, migration from Brittany to the New World became a personal matter, responding to individual imperatives. Demographic studies indicate that during the French regime 60,000 people left their homeland to live in New France and of this number 12,000 established themselves permanently in America. Among those who crossed the ocean to come to Canada, 1,040 individuals had their origins in Brittany. Half of these were sailors and merchants who went back to Brittany at the end of their voyage, soldiers who left after their tour of duty, and civil servants who left when their mandate was completed. One indication of permanent settlement is marriage, and the list of weddings celebrated in New France shows that 476 Breton men took wives in Canada during this time. Only four French provinces supplied larger contingents of pioneers.
Looking at the arrival of Bretons in New France decade by decade, it is clear that administrative decisions aimed at stimulating the settlement of Canada had a greater impact on migration than social and economic problems in the emigrants’ province of origin. During this period Brittany underwent epidemics (1634), popular uprisings (1639), and sometimes both simultaneously (1643). But these social disturbances do not appear to have motivated many people to leave for North America: between 1608 and 1649 there were only nine weddings in New France involving Bretons. The misery and famine that pushed the countryside of western Brittany to revolt in 1675 also had little impact on migration to Canada. Misfortunes specific to Brittany provide only a partial explanation for the thirty-one Breton weddings celebrated in the St Lawrence valley during the 1670s, nor do they fully explain the forty-nine Breton weddings celebrated in the 1660s, the thirty-four celebrated in the 1680s, and the forty-five celebrated in the 1690s.
Policies designed to increase the colony’s population were a more significant factor in the increase in weddings celebrated in Canada. Such policies were implemented by Jean Talon after he took up his duties as intendant in Quebec in 1663. King Louis XIV had just revoked the privileges of the Company of New France because it had not adequately fulfilled its obligations, notably the obligation to bring over a certain number of settlers each year. The colony had only 3,000 inhabitants at the time.
To correct this imbalance, Talon launched a recruitment campaign aimed at the soldiers who had come to defend New France. He offered a seigneury to any officer who would stay in the colony after his discharge and free land to any enlisted man who would do the same. Among the 400 soldiers of the Carignan-Salières Regiment who took him up on his offer, nineteen were from Brittany. Talon also targeted the trente-six-mois, tradespeople who had come to work in the colony for three years with the promise of master’s status at the end, offering them the same advantages as the soldiers. More than ten Breton tradespeople agreed to stay in Canada. Finally, Talon organized the recruitment in France of the young women who became known as les filles du roi. Some fifteen women left their native Brittany to establish a home on the banks of the St Lawrence.
These policies resulted in a substantial jump in the number of Bretons immigrating to Canada. Nineteen Breton men took wives in New France in the first half of the seventeenth century; this number rose to 160 in the second half of the century. Of course, some bachelors would also have been attracted by the advantages that were offered, but even if one ignores them there was a huge increase in Brittany’s contribution to the population of New France.
However, the largest number of Bretons came to settle in New France in the eighteenth century, and especially in the 1730s. The decades on either side of this peak were also very fruitful in terms of recruitment. The peace that reigned between New France and New England created a favourable climate for this population increase, and the marriage of some 175 Breton soliders who had served in the Marine detachment stationed in North America was also a significant factor. While the number of these weddings between Breton men and Canadian women declined slowly, it remained significant through the years surrounding the British conquest – fifty-five weddings in the 1750s and thirty in the 1760s. Soldiers continued to make a large contribution to the influx of new blood into the country.
Other Breton settlers chose to go live in Acadia and Louisiana. According to genealogical data, with 1,484 pioneers, Brittany sent more people to the shores of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia than any other French province. A study carried out in 1950 showed that at the time the data were collected seven well-established Breton families (Blanchard I, Blanchard II, Duguay, Guégen, Roy, Richard, and Thibault) accounted for 4.3 percent of the Acadian population. At the opposite end of New France, 170 of the 1,066 pioneers who settled in the Illinois valley and Louisiana came from Brittany.
Brittany’s contribution to the growth of the Province of Quebec’s population remained substantial after the British conquest. More than thirty-five weddings between Canadian men from Brittany and Canadian-born women were celebrated between 1760 and 1790. But it was after 1875 that the Breton contribution to Canada’s population became really significant, and the Roman Catholic Church played a major role in the arrival of these new Canadians. Breton migration to Canada in the last quarter of the nineteenth century was a response to promotion campaigns conducted by Catholic missionaries looking for recruits to settle the Canadian west.
In parallel with this missionary work, colonization societies sought to recruit French settlers. Campaigns conducted by the Société d’Immigration Française and the Société Foncière du Canada induced several hundred Bretons to migrate to Canada in the years preceding the onset of the Great Depression in 1929. Missionary work and Breton migration brought about the establishment of some twenty parishes in western Canada. The Manitoba communities of Sainte-Rose-du-Lac, Saint-Laurent, Saint-Claude, and Notre-Dame-de-Toutes-Aides, along with Gourin City and Falher in Alberta, owe their origins to this movement.
Breton migration to Canada was slowed by the two world wars, but it picked up again in the 1950s. The number of Canadians of Breton descent cannot be determined from Canadian statistics, but Breton sources cast some light on the question. The Amicale des Parents d’Émigrés d’Amérique du Nord (Association of Relatives of Emigrants to North America), which has its headquarters in Gourin, Brittany, has estimated that 45,000 Bretons emigrated to Canada between 1870 and 1980, and 8,000 of them now live or work in the Montreal area.
In the immediate post–World War II era, those who sought new homes in the New World did so essentially for economic reasons. Later on, in the 1960s, significant numbers of people left for Canada in search of adventure, discovery, and a new way of life. While a large proportion of emigrants continue to come from the Breton countryside, in recent decades most of them have settled in the cities of eastern Canada, especially the Montreal area.
