From: The Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples/Culture And Identity In French Canada/Mary Elisabeth AubÉ
The situation of the Acadians is somewhat different from that of the other francophone groups outside Quebec, since they have possessed an ideology of national identity for some one hundred years. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, at the same time as the French Canadians began to create a literature of national identity, the Acadians established their own ideology, in large part as a result of three books, all of them products of romanticism and its notion of the nation as culture. As Joseph Yvon Thériault has shown, it was this ideology that permitted the francophones of the Maritime provinces to constitute themselves as an Acadian society. Until this time they had existed as Acadians by identifying with the family group or, at best, with a small community often synonymous with the village. Cultural productions, most notably through the print media, facilitated this transformation of Acadian identity. First, Edmé Rameau de Saint-Père set out a programmatic vision of Acadian culture in Une colonie féodale en Amérique: l’Acadie, 1610–1710 (1877, Paris; 1889, Montreal).
In addition, two literary works aided the process. In 1847 the American author Henry Wadsworth Longfellow published an epic poem about the Acadian deportation entitled Evangeline, which was translated into French in 1865 by Pamphile Le May. In 1866-67 the French Canadian Napoléon Bourassa issued his historical novel about the event, Jacques et Marie: souvenirs d’un peuple dispersé. As a result in large part of these three texts, the deportation took on the character of the founding moment of Acadian identity.
National identity was underpinned by relationships forged and maintained through the national conventions which have been held since 1881. The proliferation of Acadian newspapers in the second half of the nineteenth century provided the means for disseminating the evolving sense of nationalism. Most of the writing was historical and biographical. At the turn of the century, Pascal Poirier produced non-fiction works of this type and also tried his hand at poetry, literary criticism, and theatre. Like his contemporaries, he published primarily in the Acadian newspapers. The first decades of the twentieth century were marked by the appearance of numerous publications documenting the customs, folklore, and language of the Acadians. The first plays and novels were also historically based: among the former, James Branch’s L’émigrant acadien (1929) treated the problem of emigration to the United States, and hisVivent nos écoles catholiques ou la Résistance de Caraquet (1932) came to the defence of Acadian educational institutions. The importance of the latter in the maintenance of Acadian identity can be seen in the cultural role played by the Université de Moncton, formed from three older colleges in 1963.
Thomas Gill (who wrote under the pseudonym Sabattis) published La fascination de la ville (1930), which recalled the Quebec novel of the land with its opposition between the attraction of the city and nostalgia for country life. In the historical novels Elle et lui (1940) and Une fleur d’Acadie (1946) by Antoine J. Léger, language and customs are presented as essential to a sense of national identity and are portrayed against the backdrop of the political tensions that led to the deportation. In poetry the glorious moments of Acadia’s past were celebrated by the Reverend Napoléon P. Landry in Poèmes de mon pays (1949) and Poèmes acadiens (1955), which he hoped would inspire Acadian youth to carry on the traditions of their ancestors.
Beginning in the 1960s and 1970s, there was a major change in the outlook of writers with respect to Acadian culture. Antonine Maillet, winner of the French Prix Goncourt for Pélagie-la-charrette (1979), may be seen as an author who has participated in the two main currents of Acadian writing from this time on. One current focuses on the idealization and preservation of the traditional characteristics of Acadian culture, while nonetheless acknowledging the negative aspects of the Acadian situation, particularly on the political level. The other current is overtly disputatious in its evocation of the exploitation and alienation in the Acadian experience. Although she draws on material associated with the backward-looking aspects of Acadian nationalism, Maillet distinguishes herself from other writers of this current in two ways: she uses a popular form of language, and she shows the alienation of Acadians as springing not only from political oppression but also from economic causes.
Although this type of literature continues to be written in Acadia, more and more works contest its idealized view of the community’s identity. Poetry has held a privileged place in this process. In Cri de terre (1972) Raymond LeBlanc expressed his despair over the “phantom country” of people “without a country, without a life.” In Mourir à Scoudouc (1974) and Rapport sur l’état de mes illusions (1976) Herménégilde Chiasson denounced the prostitution of Acadian folklore, and Guy Arsenault in Acadie Rock (1973) condemned the dehumanizing aspects of growing up in Acadia. These poets also expressed the dilemma posed by the complex sociolinguistic situation of Acadians, who live with two or more languages: various forms of French (Chiac, the form particular to the region of Moncton, as well as Acadian and Québécois) and English. The attraction of different cultures, especially the lure of American culture exerted through the media, is an important theme in their work. France Daigle’s experimental, postmodern writing reflects in its very form the competing visions that confront Acadians in their search for identity. Her La beauté de l’affaire: fiction autobiographique à plusieurs voix sur son rapport tortueux au language (1991) expresses the fact that any version of the self, be it autobiography or national history, is a construct, a fiction. Just as in Quebec, ethnicity has also been expressed through popular music. Edith Butler, Angèle Arsenault, and the group 1755 all rode the tide of Acadian nationalism in the 1970s and 1980s.
While the Quiet Revolution assured the survival of francophone culture within Quebec, it had the paradoxical effect of putting in question the future of francophone communities outside the province. No longer part of that far-reaching and diverse population designated by the term “French-Canadian,” these groups were obliged to reinvent themselves at the level of social identity. Thus were born the Franco-Ontarians, the Franco-Manitobans, the Fransaskois, the Franco-Albertans, Franco-Columbians, Franco-Yukonais, and Franco-Ténois. In a process similar to that taking place in Quebec, these collectivities created cultural works and institutions to define, manifest, and perpetuate the specificity of their identity. In Ontario a Franco-Ontarian section was created in the Canada Council, cultural centres multiplied, publishing houses were created, such as Prise de parole in Sudbury and Le Nordir in Hearst, and annual cultural events came into being, including La nuit sur l’étang and Le festival Franco-Ontarien, which showcased singers, poets, musical groups, and theatrical ensembles.
The Coopérative des artistes du Nouvel-Ontario influenced much of the artistic production in the province by encouraging the creation and presentation of works with a specifically Franco-Ontarian content. Theatre has been the privileged form of artistic creation among Franco-Ontarians, probably because it lends itself so well to the public gatherings that have been important to the community’s identity. Also, the oral presentation is a way of contesting the hegemony of high culture and its written literature, which is sometimes seen to have an alienating effect, especially when it comes from outside the community, even from Quebec or France. Franco-Ontarian artistic expression received national recognition when poet, musician, and playwright Jean-Marc Dalpé won the Governor General’s Award for his play Le chien (1987).
One could trace the French language in the west back to the explorer Pierre de La Vérendrye in the eighteenth century or the songs of Metis Pierre Falconer in the nineteenth, or cite the poems of Louis Riel as being among the first Franco-Manitoban literary creations, but it has only been since the founding of two francophone publishing houses in Manitoba, Les éditions du blé and Les éditions des plaines, in the 1970s that Franco-Manitoban literature has come into its own. Until then, French-language writing in the region depended on publication in the francophone newspapers that have existed in the province since 1871. The two currents present in Acadia are similarly evident in francophone writing in the west: one that seeks its themes and forms in tradition and another that is resolutely modern. Two examples of writers working in the avant-garde vein are J. Roger Léveillé, who has published novels and poetry, and the poet Paul Savoie. Their work is typified by a mixing of genres and an almost constant reference to the act of writing itself, both characteristics of post-modernism. Authors who use a more traditional, realistic style and have enjoyed greater success with the public are the novelists Annette St-Pierre and Simone Chaput.
Of the small number of Franco-Manitoban plays published so far, and in the numerous other plays staged with great popular success by the Cercle Molière in Winnipeg, there is a thematic similarity: the linguistic and cultural alienation felt by Franco-Manitobans. Playwrights treat this subject in various ways, sometimes using the technique of a docudrama and at other times portraying a moment of the collective past, such as one of the battles for cultural rights, in epic form, as Marcien Ferland does in Les batteux (1983). Claude Dorge’s Le roitelet (1980), on the other hand, employs irony and parody to present a sacred historical character, Louis Riel, in a new light.
Finally, in parts of the United States, where during the 1970s and 1980s there was also a rebirth of interest in ethnic heritage, identification with the culture of French Canada is still possible, especially for some Franco-Americains in the northeast and New England and for the Cajuns of Louisiana. As elsewhere, this revival has sometimes been expressed in popular music. The Psaltery, composed of Don Hinkley and Liliane Labbé, has been performing traditional and contemporary songs since the 1980s. Josée Vachon also sings to Franco-American audiences, originally as a soloist and then as part of the group Chanterelle. In Louisiana, Cajun music and Zydeco have enjoyed widespread popularity.
Among the Franco-Americans of New England, mostly descendants of immigrants from Quebec and New Brunswick, the elite resisted linguistic and cultural assimilation longer than the working class by means of the numerous cultural organizations that they created in the late nineteenth century and through a tradition of sending their children to the collèges classiques in Quebec and then to private French-language schools in the United States. During the 1970s and 1980s a group of young Franco-Americans tried to resurrect interest in francophone identity among the largely assimilated descendants of working-class immigrants. A federal grant allowed for the creation of bilingual classes in the Saint John valley of northern Maine and the republishing of Franco-American literary works and a multi-volume anthology. Assumption College in Worcester, Massachusetts, established in 1979 the Institut français, which continues to promote academic research and community interest in Franco-American culture and history. From time to time the Rassemblement des artistes francoaméricains brings together artists, particularly writers. These recent developments suggest that, while a certain Franco-American identity is persisting, it has less and less a linguistic basis. This is demonstrated by the fact that, although nearly every year witnesses the production of literary works with Franco-American themes, such works are now written in English.
In Louisiana the creation of the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana sought to reverse the effects of assimilation by reintroducing French into the schools and by promoting Cajun and Creole culture. A program in Cajun and Creole studies has been created at the University of Southwestern Louisiana. These two currents of ethnic revival may be attributed to an awakening of interest in things ethnic among the general population of the United States in the late twentieth century.
As suggested by the proliferation of names designating them, today it may be more accurate to speak in the plural of the cultures and identities of Canadian francophones and their expatriate cousins. These realities promise to continue changing in the future, as they have over the past nearly five hundred years, in response to the geographic, political, and socio-economic factors that have always influenced them.
