From: The Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples/Bretons/Mario Mimeault
Unlike emigrants from Brittany in previous centuries, Canadians of Breton origin no longer have to cut all ties with their native province. Bretons who returned to their homeland after spending their whole lives in North America founded the Amicale des Parents d’Émigrés d’Amérique du Nord in 1982. Their goal is to help Bretons who wish to leave for North America, notably by facilitating administrative procedures. From 1986 on, another association took the lead: the goal of Bretagne-Trans-América is to “encourage and maintain links and cultural and economic exchanges between North America and the Gourin region.” The establishment in 1992 of the Centre de Rayonnement de la Bretagne et des Bretons dans le Monde (Centre for the Outreach of Brittany and Bretons in the World) has further strengthened relations between the Breton homeland and Canada.
The Union des Bretons, an association founded in Montreal in 1964 by three Bretons who came to Canada in the recent wave of immigration, Claude and Yves Geoffrion and André Laurence, maintains links between Canada and these Breton associations. The union is primarily a cultural organization, with more than 300 members. Its twice-yearly French-language newsletter, An Amzer (The Times; Montreal, 1964– ), informs union members about the Breton community, invites them to social occasions, and keeps alive the memory of their province of origin.
Through its very existence, the Union des Bretons encourages the maintenance of ancestral customs. Up to 1,000 people attend events celebrating the principal Breton holiday, the feast of St Yves (Yves Helory, a Breton priest who lived from 1253 to 1303) on 19 May. An even older celebration is Candlemas, observed on 2 February and originally instituted by the Catholic Church to replace pagan celebrations of the return of the sun. The Breton observance of Candlemas retains echoes of the pagan celebration, notably the frying of pancakes. People of Breton origin living in Quebec’s Gaspé region still fry pancakes on 2 February to ward off bad luck and promote the prosperity of the celebrants.
Members of the union will take advantage of any occasion to fly the Wen-A-Dù, the black-and-white Breton flag, and recall its origins in evenings devoted to traditional music. For a number of years a Montreal folkdance group, Le Triskel, has helped give these community celebrations a festive air. There is, however, more than nostalgia involved in the union’s activities. Through its annual Journée culturelle or cultural day, it seeks to make people in Quebec more aware of the Breton presence. This show of vitality consists of a variety of activities: cake-baking contests, social dinners, film showings, traditional dance workshops, exhibitions of works by Breton artists, and lectures on the Breton presence in Canada.
The Breton presence represents more than a contribution to the ranks of the francophone community in Canada: it is a significant demographic heritage in its own right. Canadian toponymy bears the stamp of this heritage. Every major city and town in Quebec has its Jacques-Cartier Street. The township of Brest on the Labrador coast perpetuates the memory of its Breton namesake. Saint-Brieux, Saskatchewan, recalls its founders’ roots in the Breton city of Saint-Brieuc. Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré, Quebec, and Sainte-Anne-des-Chênes, Manitoba, share more than the name of a saint who is widely venerated in Brittany: the founders of both communities had Breton roots. Individual Bretons who settled in Canada and their descendants have left their mark on Canadian history, from Guillaume Couillard, the first Breton settler in the country, through Father Jean-Louis Le Loutre, one of the most zealous promoters of the Acadian cause in the eighteenth century, to Louis Riel, whose fierce defence of the interests of the Metis of western Canada won him a place in the pantheon of national heroes.
The fate of Breton ethnicity in North America has been slow oblivion. Under the French regime, people came to North America not as Bretons but as part of an empire. Registries of the period record people’s parish of origin, but not their province. In the Breton communities that were formed in western Canada in the nineteenth century, memories of Brittany remained alive at least through the lifetime of the pioneering generation. Afterward, memories persisted, but people’s feeling of belonging to their community of origin weakened considerably. It is only in the last few decades, with the founding of the Union des Bretons, that the feeling of belonging to a distinctive community of origin has resurfaced. So far, however, it has been restricted to recreational socio-cultural activities and has never acquired a political character.
Nor did the Breton pioneers in Canada transmit their ancestral language to later generations. There are many reasons for this. It is only very recently that new Breton immigrants to Canada have formed cohesive groups of their own. Coming to the New World as individuals, earlier Breton immigrants dispersed as they went where their occupations took them, becoming melted in with the mass of French provincials who settled in the St Lawrence valley, lost in the anglophone majority in the west, or scattered in contemporary Quebec society. They took on the customs of their adopted country, spoke the language of the people around them, and devoted their efforts to the social goals of the community as a whole.
